Four Nations Form Historic Alliance to Advance Women's Sport

Today marks a pivotal moment for women’s sport with four nations forming an alliance aimed at advancing female health and performance worldwide. 

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 help female athletes overcome prevalent health issues to reach their full sporting potential.   

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.  

“On a global scale, health literacy around female-specific conditions is poor,” Dr Harris said. 

“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. 

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

“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. 

“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,” Donaldson said. 

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. 

“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,” Dr Burden said. 

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 

Further information:

 Australian Institute of Sport: The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) is responsible for leading and enabling the Australian high performance system with the ultimate goal of helping athletes achieve international success.  

The AIS drives innovative projects in engineering, sports medicine, research, wellbeing, sport science and more. This work includes the AIS Female Performance Health Initiative which were established in 2019 to improve female athlete specific knowledge and provide systems of support.  

The UK Sports Institute: The UK Sports Institute (UKSI) delivers outstanding support that enables sports and athletes to excel. The UKSI is the largest single provider of world-class science, medicine, technology, data and engineering services within the sport sector to Olympic and Paralympic sports in the UK.  

Established in 2002 and grant funded by The National Lottery and Exchequer (via UK Sport) since 2006, the support services the UKSI offers has expanded, from more traditional sports support such as medicine, physiotherapy and strength and conditioning, into services such as biomechanics, performance innovation and performance data.  

Just as importantly, the UKSI operates as a network, connecting all these outstanding support services into one delivery system. By sharing challenges, information and breakthroughs across the UKSI network, sports benefit from the cumulative knowledge of all the people in the UKSI network and community.  

High Performance Sport New Zealand: High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ) work together with National Sporting Organisations (NSOs) to enable and empower world class performances that inspire New Zealanders. 

To ensure repeatable success for New Zealand on the world stage, we partner with specific sports and campaigns. We focus on the performance pathways, wellbeing, engagement, and funding and investment for those sports. 

In the daily training environment, we place carefully chosen teams of experts around elite athletes and coaches, and through a holistic and collaborative approach with NSOs, provide the additional resources, knowledge and inspiration needed to enhance their world-beating capability. 

United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee: Founded in 1894 and headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) serves as both the National Olympic Committee and National Paralympic Committee for the United States.  

The USOPC is focused on protecting, supporting and empowering America’s elite athletes, and is responsible for fielding U.S. teams for the Olympic, Paralympic, Youth Olympic, Pan American and Parapan American Games, and serving as the steward of the Olympic and Paralympic movements in the U.S. The USOPC is entirely privately funded through the generosity of the American public and the support of many commercial partners.