Women's Health and Performance Initiative

The Women’s Health and Performance Initiative (WHPI) is a UC Berkeley–led effort to close the long-standing data gap in women’s health and athletic performance by centering research on female athletes.

Using secure, real-time data from women’s collegiate and professional sports, WHPI develops predictive models and evidence-based interventions tailored specifically to women’s physiology. In partnership with Cal Athletics, SPD Sports, and leveraging the Institutes UC-wide scope, the initiative aims to improve performance, reduce injury, and translate these insights into better health and readiness outcomes for women in high-demand roles, from first responders to national security professionals.

WHPI will be a multi-year multi phase project that will have the opportunity to not only advance science,but to translate breakthroughs into real-world impact. This includes:

• The vast majority of past athletic research has focused primarily on men, leaving a major evidence gap in women’s health and performance data.

• WHPI centers female athletes’ physiological, neurological, and performance data to build predictive models and evidence-based interventions tailored specifically to women.

• Core goals include a secure data platform, algorithms to predict injury and guide “return to play,” noninvasive neurological sensing, and long-term health metrics for the next generation of athletes. Insights designed to benefit not only female athletes but also women in national security roles, military personnel, and first responders.

• Informing policy interventions through utilizing causal inference to better predict outcomes.

Further announcements coming January 2026