New UC Berkeley data project tackles health, treatment gaps for female athletes, on and off the field

Women’s sports are in the spotlight, both in the United States and internationally.

Olympic champions like figure skater Alysa Liu, snowboarder Chloe Kim and ice hockey player Laila Edwards secured medals at the 2026 Winter Games in Italy. 

Back at home leagues like the Women’s National Basketball Association and National Women’s Soccer League continue to grow in popularity, with many other professional and collegiate sports gaining attention as well.

But when it comes to providing the right care for these athletes — from rehabbing injuries to supporting them throughout the different stages of life — a lot of unknowns endure, particularly compared to their male counterparts. 

A new program launched at UC Berkeley late last year aims to close that knowledge gap. Called the Women’s Health and Performance Initiative, the project seeks to gather more information that can lead to better overall health for female athletes.

The project is run by the university’s Institute for Security and Governance. It will collect health data from college athletes, initially at UC Berkeley, to develop new models and tailored information, including through the use of artificial intelligence, to improve health outcomes for women.

And leaders say the benefits extend beyond just sports. 

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Sports, security and beyond

Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano founded the UC Berkeley Institute for Security and Governance. She spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about how the new project got started, and how she hopes it could expand to more schools and organizations.

Where did the idea for this project come from? What was the initial spark?

There were many, but one in particular was we saw the explosion in women's sports particularly with the WNBA, the Valkyries in San Francisco, and so forth. Some folks came to us and said there is an amazing lack of data about women's health, particularly for women athletes. That data would be very useful in developing and improving treatments all kinds of ways to better equip women in sports, better ways to train, etc.

And then from the security angle we know that women who are first responders and [in] the security agencies — the FBI, Secret Service, CIA and the like — there’s almost a one-to-one correlation between them and having been women athletes at some earlier point in their life. We think that what we can develop with the data we're collecting here, it will be transferable into the security world as well.

There's been a lot more attention on women's sports in recent years, but when did you personally become aware of this issue and this knowledge gap?

Basically just through some conversations. Berkeley is a place that is always willing to innovate and to apply its brains, its expertise, particularly where there are knowledge gaps. And there's a tremendous knowledge gap in terms of the performance metrics uh for women athletes.

When this initiative was in its initial stages what kind of feedback and interest did you get?

We reached out first to Cal Athletics and they were all over it. They said, "we really need this. This would be great." They're going to be one of the first suppliers of data for the initiative. We've been working with the National Women's Soccer League; we've reached out to a number of other universities and institutes across the country for the data that we will need to actually do the work.

Help us visualize the kind of data that you're looking for.

All kinds of data, mostly health related. For example, men athletes if they tear an ACL, it's not a career-ending injury anymore. It’s treated, they’re back on the field. Women who tear an ACL, first of all the frequency of that is underreported, but the treatment would be different. Why? Because women’s anatomy is different.

Or take women’s running shoes. Women's running shoes now are basically men's running shoes in smaller sizes, but women's feet are different. What we hope to discover through this initiative are ways to better improve treatments, therapies, and equipment for women athletes and for those who go on into the security-related fields.

A lot of it we hope will come from wearables. But Cal Athletics already has a tremendous amount of information about women athletes who've been participants, so we’ll get their voluntary consent and collect all that data as well.

How long do you think this initiative will last?

That is impossible to say. We kicked it off in early December so we're still at our early stages, but I would hope that it would actually be a continuing effort. The more data we have the better research we can do, the better treatments and therapies and so forth can be developed.

‘This is no longer something scary or taboo’

Dr. Cassandra Lee is the Chief of Orthopedic Sports Medicine at UC Davis Health who said she is excited to see what UC Berkeley’s new project could bring. She touched on the disparities around treating female athletes, especially during different phases of life, and how these could be better addressed with new data.

What would you like people to better understand about the injuries and treatment that women could receive — and maybe don’t receive — that you’re trying to change?

There are huge treatment gaps, we actually really don't know a lot. There's very little actually published about women athletes in terms of any specific injuries to females or any optimal recovery. We know that women, when they do have sport injuries, they probably do require multidisciplinary care because there's hormones involved, there's psychology. There’s not just the physical, there’s also the other aspects of it.

I think something like this is so exciting because we can now actually try to get through a lot of the noise that we have, and anecdotal evidence, and really get to the root of it and treat our female athletes. 

As a doctor you’re trying to find the right treatment plan for each patient. What kind of challenges have you run up against when it comes to a lack of data on women’s health or injuries?

I think a big example would be, what do I do with my pregnant athlete? I don't know, there literally is no data out there. As an orthopedic surgeon I can tell you what's going on from an injury standpoint, but from the maternal fetal medicine part of it, I don't know the physiology and what's safe for an athlete to go back to play. 

When do things snap back into place? When can you load your core? When can you jump? We don't know that information, just as the OBGYN doctors don’t really fully know from the muscular skeletal standpoint what part recovers, when is it safe to load the joint? We don't really know how to tell our athletes, or especially our pregnant athletes, when it is safe to return to play, let alone what happens if there's an injury. We just don't know. 

The postpartum journey is so different from one woman to the next. How do you advise a female athlete when it's okay to go back to the sport that they're playing? 

That is an impossible question to answer, and actually has been a research interest of mine. We've been trying to get funding for this, and that's always a difficult part of trying to do research. I think this is where something like having this AI initiative really can make a difference. Outside of Michele Kang dropping $50 million from the sports leagues, we don't have that kind of money to look into this and investigate.

I think this is the power of where this AI can really hone in, get information that we can have — that's in the [published] literature — but also then we can tease out the noise, try to get to the point where we can ask the specific questions so we can get to the root of the matter. For postpartum recovery, it is individual for each of our patients, let alone our athletes. Why can’t I return to play? Well, can I quantify or describe like, “does your pelvic floor feel right?” How do I ask that question? Is it because you're not mentally ready to go back on the field, or is it because you don't feel right when you're trying to jump? I think this is where that multidisciplinary approach is so critical. 

Things change so much throughout a woman’s life especially in terms of hormones, perimenopause or menopause. Is there data or research of how to treat and care for them during those life stages?

You’re hitting the nail on the head right there. We really don’t know. Just as women's sports are having a moment, I think the idea of talking about having these awkward conversations about menopause, about pregnancy, are finally happening. We haven't broached these questions before to understand how a female athlete goes and approaches their menopause years. 

Title IX has only been around for about 50 years, this is when women were actually allowed to do athletics. I think now we're finally in that generation [where] women are really pushing the limits and trying to show what we can do. We know that women [may] have better resistance to endurance training. Does that apply in the menopausal age? We know with the hormonal differences even within the cycles of normal adulthood, that's different than the cycles that change into menopause. How does that work on our bone density, our muscle mass, our fast-twitch, slow-twitch muscles? I have questions, I don’t have answers. Not yet.

How do you want people to continue having these conversations about women's health and wellbeing? 

I think [in] situations like this, where we just keep on talking about this. This is no longer something scary and taboo to talk about. Women athletes are on the national stage, we’re getting excited about watching the performances. This needs to be part of the conversation. Women athletes are here to stay, and we need to treat them as such. We need to really optimize it and see where performance can really go. 

I think that's what's the exciting part about not only elite athletes, but even the everyday athlete. What we're doing every day, how do we translate that into our longevity cycles? Longevity is a big exciting word now because it's not just about aging gracefully, but it's actually thriving as we age. How do all of us stay active for longer, and really get the most out of everything?