Sports-Global research group hoping to fill IOC void on female athlete welfare

MANCHESTER, England : A lack of information on female injuries and illness from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has prompted a group of more than two dozen researchers to fill it with what they hope will be a "game-changer" for female athlete welfare.

In a paper published recently in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the 25 experts identified 10 areas of female health that can affect sport including menstrual and gynaecological health, pregnancy, breast feeding and mental health in the sport environment, among others.

The paper was in response to the IOC's 2020 consensus statement on recording and reporting data on injuries.

"Consensus statements work really well for (men's) sports because usually it's men that create the systems, they're working in men's sport, and lo and behold, it gets used more often in the men's side of the game," said Isabel Moore, an associate professor with Cardiff Metropolitan University's School of Sport and Health Sciences.

"There's no mention of the female athlete, or the kind of nuances around things like the menstrual cycle or pregnancy and postpartum. In a general system, it wouldn't even be recorded for example that someone would be pregnant or in the postpartum phase. Something that I would think is quite simple and straightforward doesn't get captured."

Moore said discussions around "taboo" topics such as the menstrual cycle and incontinence in women, "which often gets joked about," need to be normalised.

The health of female athletes is a hot topic, amplified by the number of serious knee injuries ahead of the month-long Women's World Cup soccer tournament starting on July 20 that have prompted players to call for more research on the topic.

Recording data on female-specific