New UC Berkeley Initiative Will Try to Close ‘Dangerous’ Data Gap in Women's Sports

For decades, sports medicine has relied on data collected almost exclusively from men — an inequity that experts say underserves female athletes, and creates a barrier to preventing career-ending injuries.

A first-of-its-kind initiative launched by UC Berkeley on Friday seeks to close that gap in medical research.

“The net result of this disparity can be observed on playing fields, in pools, on courts, in pitches and in arenas,” said Janet Napolitano, former UC Berkeley President and founder of the Center for Security in Politics, the institute leading the project, at a press conference.

The university’s “Women’s Health and Performance Initiative” will collect biometric data from women student-athletes and professional players and use machine learning to create new predictive health models specifically for female physiology.

Despite the massive growth in women’s sports over the last three decades, the science has not kept pace. Published research in sports and exercise focused on women is nearly obsolete; less than 10% of sports medicine and sports science research has involved women athletes exclusively.

This persistent research gap has resulted in real-world disadvantages, leaving women athletes prone to preventable, career-ending injuries at rates significantly higher than their male counterparts.

Dr. Cindy Chang, the chief medical officer for the National Women’s Soccer League and a former head team physician at Cal, highlighted the severity of the research void.

“Without that baseline epidemiological data, we have no idea how our interventions are going to impact injury rates and performance,” Chang said.

In collegiate and professional sports, women suffer from anterior cruciate ligament tears at significantly higher rates than men. Chang noted that she struggled to find resources to study these injury rates as far back as 1995. Thirty years later, that lack persists, she said.

“An ACL injury today can be career-ending for a female athlete, but for their male counterparts, no longer,” Napolitano said.

In an email to KQED, Chang noted that the first phase of research will focus on identifying the most common injuries to establish baseline data that doesn’t currently exist. This includes analyzing return-to-play protocols and the mental and physical variables that affect recovery.

The project, which will likely span multiple years, will begin with collegiate athletes before expanding data collection to professional sports leagues and other academic institutions.

Napolitano, the former Secretary of Homeland Security from 2009 to 2013, said these risks carry over from the field to national defense. She noted that a significant number of women who are first responders, in the military and law enforcement, are former athletes, yet they are often held to training standards or equipped with gear designed based on male biometrics.

“Here at Berkeley, you can address a gender equity issue while at the same time improving national security,” Napolitano said during the launch event.

Dr. Chang explained the physiological crossover between a midfielder on the soccer pitch and a soldier on the field, as both groups face high physical training demands and require similar mental fortitude.

“If either woman is experiencing menstrual cycle-related cramping and low back pain, for example, their performance metrics, perceived wellness ratings, and objective sleep quality measurements may be impacted,” Chang wrote in an email. “And thus their ability to perform their sports and job duties may be affected as well.”

According to university officials, the program will utilize UC Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science, and Society to feed this data into machine learning models. The goal is to identify patterns that human analysis might miss — predicting injury risks, optimizing recovery times and tailoring nutrition plans specifically for female physiology.

“This is an ambitious endeavor,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons. “What we learn from this initiative will lead to the creation of new tools — tools that can be commercialized and brought to market.”

The partnership also offers the university a chance to turn student-athletes into pioneers, said Jenny Simon-O’Neill, Cal’s co-athletic director. She highlighted the university’s history of producing elite talent like Alex Morgan and Missy Franklin.

“We strongly believe that we have a unique opportunity in the collegiate sports environment to develop leaders of tomorrow,” Simon-O’Neill said. “Our student athletes understand the importance of innovation.”