The global movement to improve health, research and performance support for female athletes is getting significantly bigger.
The Global Alliance for Female Athletes (GAFA) has expanded from its original four founding nations to nine member nations, adding Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland to an international coalition focused on closing critical gaps in female athlete health and performance.
The alliance was launched in 2025 by Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, bringing together sports institutes, Olympic bodies, researchers and performance experts to improve the evidence and resources available to women and girls in sport.
With the latest expansion, GAFA now includes:
- Australia
- United States
- United Kingdom
- New Zealand
- Canada
- France
- Germany
- Japan
- Switzerland
Ireland and Belgium have also joined as supporting partners, widening the initiative’s international reach even further.
Why the expansion matters
For decades, sports science and medical research have often relied heavily on evidence developed around male athletes, leaving important questions about female-specific health and performance less thoroughly understood.
GAFA was created to help address that imbalance by connecting researchers, sports medicine professionals, coaches and athletes across countries and making evidence-based information easier to access.
The alliance says its work includes educational resources such as webinars, podcasts, videos, learning modules and practical tools designed for athletes and the professionals who support them.
AIS Female Performance Health Initiative lead Dr Rachel Harris, who served as GAFA’s inaugural chair, said the rapid growth demonstrates strong international demand for collaboration on female athlete health.
The objective is not simply to produce more research, but to make sure research actually reaches athletes, coaches and medical teams who can use it.
From research gaps to real-world performance
The issue extends far beyond one sport.
Female athletes can face health and injury considerations that require more specialized understanding, including menstrual health, hormonal factors, reproductive health, bone health and injury prevention.
One particularly important area is anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries. Research cited in the CNA/Reuters report indicates female athletes can face a substantially higher risk of ACL injury than male athletes, with estimates ranging from roughly two to six times higher depending on the sport and circumstances.
That disparity highlights why supporters of GAFA believe female-specific research needs to move more quickly from laboratories and academic publications into everyday training, competition and medical practice.
A bigger global network for women in sport
The new members bring some of the world’s major high-performance sporting systems into the same international network.
The expanded alliance includes organizations such as the Canadian Olympic Committee and Canadian Paralympic Committee, France’s National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (INSEP), Germany’s Institute for Applied Training Science, Japan’s High Performance Sport Centre/Japan Sport Council and Swiss Olympic, alongside the founding organizations.
That matters because research and best practices can vary considerably between countries and sporting systems.
By creating a common international network, GAFA aims to allow knowledge to move faster between researchers, coaches, doctors, physiotherapists and athletes.
The Australian Institute of Sport says the alliance’s expansion will strengthen international collaboration, help identify research gaps and improve support for female athletes and the professionals around them.
Women’s sport is growing — but the science must keep up
The expansion comes at a time when women’s sport is experiencing enormous growth in participation, visibility, commercial interest and global audiences.
But increased investment and competition also raise the stakes around athlete health.
The challenge is no longer simply getting more women onto the field, track, court or starting line. The next question is whether sporting systems can provide them with medical care, training methods and performance knowledge specifically designed around the realities of female athletes.
GAFA’s expansion suggests a growing number of sporting nations believe the answer requires international cooperation rather than isolated national programs.
And with nine nations now formally involved — plus Ireland and Belgium as supporting partners — the initiative is moving closer to its broader ambition of making trusted female-athlete research available across the sporting world.
The bigger question
The real test for GAFA will come next: can an alliance built around research and knowledge-sharing translate that evidence into fewer injuries, better health outcomes and longer careers for female athletes?
With women’s sport accelerating globally, the pressure to deliver is only getting bigger.
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