Women & Girls in Sports Conversation

Kathryn (Kate) Ackerman, MD, MPH, FACSM, is the co-founder and director of WHSP Medical, WHSP Institute and the biennial International Female Athlete Conference, as well as an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She also founded and formerly directed the Female Athlete Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.

She earned her BA from Cornell University, MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health and completed her residency in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her sports medicine fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital, endocrinology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital as well as further research training in the Neuroendocrine Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.

She chairs the USRowing Medical Committee, co-chairs the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee Women’s Health Task Force, is a member of the World Rowing Medical Commission and the Women’s Tennis Association Women’s Health Taskforce and is a Deputy Editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Her research focuses on female athlete health and the various aspects of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). She has authored/co-authored over 175 articles and book chapters related to sports medicine, endocrinology, rowing, bone health and female athletes, including position statements with the International Olympic Committee.

Athletically, Dr. Ackerman represented the US as a lightweight rower at the World Championships, having taken up rowing as a walk-on at Cornell. She has multiple National Championships titles and still competes with her teammates for life as a masters athlete. In 2020 she became a member of the National Leadership Council for the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, a $220M initiative to improve health and performance globally. Dr. Ackerman leads the Alliance’s focus on scientific advancements for women.