Kathryn (Kate) Ackerman, MD, MPH, FACSM
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School
Founder and Medical Director of the Female Athlete Program at Boston Children’s Hospital
Associate Director of the Sports Endocrine Research Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital
Seminar Information
Half the world's population is female, and more girls and women are participating in sport than at any time in history. The International Olympic Committee has made a commitment towards gender equality in athlete participation at the Games. However, exercise and sports science research is still conducted predominantly in male populations. Specifically, in single-gender sports performance research, women comprise just 3% of participants.. Only 20% of sports medicine studies demonstrated between-sex differences or compared outcomes by sex. This talk will discuss some of the critical sports medicine issues salient to female athletes and where we need to go to shift the needle in addressing their sex-specific needs. Topics will include relative energy deficiency in sport, bone health, and considerations in studying female athlete health and performance across the menstrual cycle.
Kathryn (Kate) Ackerman, MD, MPH, FACSM is board certified in Internal Medicine, Sports Medicine, and Endocrinology. She is the Founder and Medical Director of the Female Athlete Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, the Associate Director of the Sports Endocrine Research Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is the Co-creator and Director of the International Biennial Female Athlete Conference.
Dr. Ackerman was a varsity rower in college and later a rower on the US National Team. She is the Chair of the USRowing Medical Commission and a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. Her research focuses on the Female Athlete Triad (Triad) and the various aspects of Relative Energy in Deficiency in Sport (RED-S). She has authored/co-authored over 100 articles and book chapters related to sports medicine, endocrinology, rowing, bone health, and female athletes. She has presented extensively nationally and internationally on sports endocrine topics including exercise-associated hyponatremia, diabetes and exercise, intersex and transgender athletes, eating disorders in sport, Triad, RED-S, and bone stress injuries. She is a member of the International Olympic Committee’s RED-S and Female Athlete Health working groups and a member of the World Rowing Sports Medicine Commission.