Study hopes to improve health and wellness of athletes, alums

Pac-12 has given CU a $200,000 grant to fund research of student-athlete mental health.

The University of B O U LDE R

Colorado and its athletic department have made the health and well being of their students and student-athletes a higher priority than ever. In particular, there has been an increased focus on mental health.

CU is now hoping to learn more about its alumni, and how that knowledge can benefit current and future Buffaloes.

Funded by a two-year, $200,000 grant from the Pac-12 Conference, the CU Boulder research faculty and the athletic department are beginning a study of 2,000 alumni who have graduated from the school in the past 25 years.

“There is a group of us that have been talking about this for a while,” said Theresa Hernandez, a professor of psychology and neuroscience and associate dean for research at the College of Arts and Sciences, who will lead the study. “Really thinking about, we have a good idea of how we’re doing for student-athletes here, but how are we — or how have we been doing — for our alums? We thought it would be good to do that, to ask them.”

Among the group who came up with the study is Hernandez; Miguel Rueda, a senior associate athletic director and leader of the department’s health and wellness programs; Dr. Sourav Poddar, the director of primary care sports medicine; and associate professors of integrative physiology Williams Byrnes and Matthew McQueen.

The group is aiming to study 1,000 former student-athletes and 1,000 alums who were not athletes at CU.

Athletes from six different sports will be targeted for the study — two contact sports (football and women’s soccer), two mid-range contact sports (men’s and women’s basketball) and two non-contact sports (men’s and women’s cross country) — allowing researchers to see the impact of contact or noncontact sports.