December 10, 2024
Designing better methods to help female athletes train to prevent, recover from injuries
The popularity of women鈥檚 sports has increased substantially in the last year, but higher risk of injury continue to create disparities between male and female athletes. Several common injuries particularly impact women鈥檚 sports, with ACL tears found to be two to eight times more common for women than men in the same sports.
Jenny Robinson, a 天美影视传媒 assistant professor of mechanical engineering, studies how male and female tissues differ in recovery after sports injuries. As endowed chair in women鈥檚 sports medicine and lifetime fitness in the orthopedics and sports medicine department at the UW School of Medicine, Robinson鈥檚 interests lie in finding better methods to help female athletes prevent and recover from injuries through their training.
UW News spoke with Robinson in a Q&A session, where they learned more about the potentially career-ending impacts of ACL tears and why women tend to be more susceptible to these injuries. In addition, Robinson went in-depth about her research aimed at understanding how hormonal and mechanical signaling cues play a role in tissue scarring, as well as explaining the significance of collaborating with professionals who are focused on women鈥檚 health.