As an athletic trainer with a sports medicine background, Kara Radzak was curious to know how much she could put her body through after giving birth to her first son in 2018.
Radzak, an associate professor in Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences, housed within UNLV’s School of Integrated Health Sciences, browsed through PubMed for resources and evidence-based guidelines that might prove helpful to her recovery — to little avail.
More research was available by the time she had her second son in 2021, but she was drawn to social media to see what information was being shared to women like her.
What she found was an algorithm chock full of dubious information.
“This work is 100% personal because I was the woman getting fed algorithms,” Radzak said. “I saw a lot of stuff out there that, as a clinician, I knew wasn’t true. We need to give these women concrete guidelines on what to do.”
A Statewide Collaboration to Fill in the Gaps
Radzak and UNLV alumna Annie Lindsay of the University of Nevada, Reno Extension are studying the information that women in Southern Nevada receive on physical activity during the pregnancy and postpartum periods.
“As an Extension specialist working in the community, I have seen the need for greater support and encouragement of physical activity during the peripartum time period and how mom's health and health behaviors impact their children,” Lindsay said. “I've appreciated the collaboration with Dr. Radzak on these initiatives, and we are looking forward to sharing information obtained from these studies this spring as we build more resources for moms of young children.”
Radzak and her team interviewed mothers as well as Clark County health care providers to better understand where they felt the information was lacking, such as timelines for returning to exercise postpartum and the rationale behind restrictions or modifications, and what guidance they hoped to receive or provide regarding exercise during pregnancy and postpartum periods.
“Women want their providers to have that information for them, but that isn’t always the case,” she said. “At the same time, we want to help the providers so they have that information when their patients ask them for it. This needs to be a team effort.”
By interviewing mothers as well as healthcare providers, Radzak hopes they’ll be able to help close the informational loophole so mothers don’t feel lost sifting through social media.
“There is good research out there, and we need to easily get it into the hands of those who need it,” she said.
Challenging Old Stereotypes
In the realm of elite athletics, more women are breaking down barriers and challenging the long-held beliefs on the ability to still enjoy a successful career after childbirth.
Women like tennis superstar Serena Williams, Olympic gold medalist Allyson Felix, and professional soccer player Alex Morgan have been candid about their experiences as new mothers and how giving birth did not signal the end of their athletic careers.
“We are seeing high-profile athletes challenging this idea that motherhood is a career limiter,” Radzak said. “Women are pushing the barriers. When I had my second son, there was more information available, but I felt like this was still an area that needed to be addressed from a sports medicine lens.”
UNLV’s Sports Innovation Institute has also provided funding to support additional ongoing perinatal physical activity projects. These endeavors led to the creation of the Supporting a Movement Optimized Motherhood Lab, or Supporting M.O.M. Lab, where Radzak and her research team work on projects related to physical activity during peripartum periods.
Most of the work being done in the Supporting M.O.M. Lab focuses on women who are active throughout their day; not just those who come from an elite athletic background. Through the lab, Radzak is also part of a separate research team collecting data about women in the military returning to active duty after having a baby.
“We know that if you’re active during pregnancy, there are better health outcomes for both mom and baby,” she said.
Partnering with Extension
The collaboration is funded by the Extension. Once their research is finished, the team will post a centralized toolkit on Extension’s Healthy Kids Resource Center so health care providers as well as pregnant and postpartum mothers can easily access information about peripartum exercise and the postpartum return-to-exercise processes.
“This is one of several projects that Extension is happy to support as part of a collaboration between Extension and UNLV faculty,” said Jake DeDecker, Extension director. “This project was identified as meeting an important need in Clark County as it provides Nevada mothers with a much-needed resource.”
Radzak admitted that while there is still more work to do, she remains encouraged by the progress their team has made.
“Research has really taken off in the pregnancy and postpartum space, and now we’re able to collect our own data to give people the information they need,” she said. “There are a lot of female researchers with stories like mine who want to see exercise science and sports science move forward. It feels great to do research in an area that needs it.”
