$50m funding for new Women’s Health, Sports & Performance Institute
Less than 10% of sports science and sports medicine research is focused solely on women
A new organisation focused on the health and performance of female athletes has launched in Boston with more than $50m in philanthropic funding, as women’s sport continues to grow faster than the research and medical systems that support it.
The Women’s Health, Sports & Performance Institute (WHSP) brings together research, education and clinical care under one umbrella, with the stated goal of improving how female athletes are studied, trained and treated across their sporting lives.
According to the institute, the funding — provided by philanthropists David and Jane Ott and Clara Wu Tsai — is intended to support long-term research programmes, education initiatives and clinical services focused specifically on women and girls in sport.
Ten years ago, less than 10% of sports science and sports medicine research focused solely on women and that percentage has not increased. In a 2025 analysis of nearly 1,500 studies in three major sports medicine journals, fewer than 1 in 20 (<6%) included the menstrual status of female participants in the study design.
"WHSP was founded to increase the volume of research to drive advances in our understanding of female athlete health and performance,” said WHSP co-founder, Jane Ott.
“Better data means more actionable guidance. Our goal is to optimize the experience, performance, and longevity of the next generation of female athletes,"
From longstanding gaps to a formal institute
Dr. Kathryn Ackerman, WHSP co-founder, is a physician and researcher who is also the founder of the international Female Athlete Conference, and has spent much of her career studying issues such as bone health, energy availability and hormonal function in athletes. WHSP represents an effort to move beyond individual research projects toward a permanent institutional model.
The institute is based in Boston and includes co-located research facilities, education spaces and a clinical practice. Its medical arm, WHSP Medical, began seeing patients in September 2025 and offers multidisciplinary care spanning sports medicine, endocrinology, nutrition, mental health and performance diagnostics.
"Female athlete health has been my focus for decades, and for decades, women athletes have been asked to perform without the benefit of research designed for them," said Dr. Ackerman.
"As an athlete, I felt the gaps. As a physician and researcher, I've spent my career trying to close them. WHSP is the culmination of that experience and will help us make real progress."
A three-part model
WHSP is organised around three core areas:
Research, focused on generating evidence grounded in female physiology across different sports and life stages
Education, designed to translate research findings into practical guidance for clinicians, coaches and performance staff
Clinical care, delivered through WHSP Medical, with services tailored specifically to female athletes
The institute says this integrated approach is intended to address a common problem in sports science, where research findings often fail to make their way into everyday practice.
The WHSP Institute research agenda also includes addressing issues specific to adolescent athletes, collegiate and professional competitors, postpartum athletes, and women navigating perimenopause and beyond. WHSP also develops education and protocols for coaches, trainers, and clinicians caring for female athletes.
Why the timing matters
The launch comes amid sustained commercial growth in women’s sport. Between 2022 and 2024, revenue in women’s sports grew 4.5 times faster than men’s, while women’s sports sponsorships grew 50% faster than men’s during the 2024–2025 seasons, according to industry data cited by the institute.
That growth has driven expansion in professional leagues, media coverage and participation. But WHSP’s founders argue that investment in the scientific and medical foundations supporting female athletes has not kept pace.
As revenues, sponsorships and participation in women’s sports rise, the lack of female-specific evidence is becoming harder to justify — or ignore. New investment in research and education is aiming to close this gap, but the broader hope too is the ‘trickle-down’ effect — whereby better understanding of female physiology can benefit the broader population too.