Four Nation alliance aims to advance women's sport

Four nations have formed an alliance aimed at helping female athletes overcome prevalent health issues to reach their full sporting potential. The Global Alliance for Female Athletes (GAFA) will see leading health practitioners and sports scientists from Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand join forces to empower and educate female athletes.

Athletes, coaches and support staff now have access to world-leading evidence, performance insights and best-practice information all in the one place – for free.

Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) Female Performance Health Initiative Project Lead Dr Rachel Harris said collaborating with world-class experts to empower and educate athletes will lead to even greater results on the world stage. 

Dr Harris noted “on a global scale, health literacy around female-specific conditions is poor. This gap in knowledge, coupled with wide-spread misinformation, means athletes often miss the early warning signs and go undiagnosed or are inadequately treated for conditions like endometriosis or dysmenorrhea.

“Athletes are then forced to miss training days which reduces their chances of making competition or in some cases sees them leave the sport altogether. Our goal is to change this.”

High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) Athlete Performance Support Lead Dr Helen Fulcher agreed the prioritisation of women’s health is long overdue.

Dr Fulcher advised “we know female athlete research, knowledge and education lags that of male athletes globally so bringing together international expertise will help change this inequality.

“The benefits are broad for female athletes and their coaches. They will be able to access and utilise the most up-to-date information that is not always available in a digestible or translatable form.

“Every nation will go on to implement the knowledge in specific ways – those are some of the national secrets to achieving success – however, having a baseline of collective public information grows the world stage for all.”

In another major first, future projects will be conquered as a collective rather than in silos said United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) Sports Medicine Vice President Amber Donaldson.

Donaldson added “this collaboration, bringing expertise and initiative in the space of women’s health and performance together, will allow us to move the needle faster and more efficiently than if we were attempting to do this on our own.”

The UK Sport Institute’s Female Athlete Health and Performance Lead Dr Richard Burden said the GAFA hopes to eventually have representation from every nation.

Dr Burden shared “If we can raise the awareness and prioritisation of female athlete health and performance in all corners of the globe then GAFA will have been a success.”

The four nations met face-to-face for the first time at the 2024 Women in Sport Congress in Sydney and will meet again in June for the Female Athlete Conference in Boston. 

The GAFA website is available via YourGAFA.com