NEW YORK -- Major League Baseball and the U.S. military teamed up on Wednesday in a first-of-its-kind summit on performance-enhancing drugs.
MLB hosted the inaugural Performance Enhancing Substances Summit at the league's headquarters in New York City in a joint effort with the Uniformed Services University's Consortium for Health and Military Performance and its Operation Supplement Safety (OPSS) program.
"The theme today is that the challenges facing the military are very similar to the challenges that our athletes face -- on the performance and the nutrition front, on the dietary supplement front and on the performance-enhancing substance front," said Jon Coyles, MLB's vice president of drug, health and safety programs.
The PES Summit had three overarching goals: Raise awareness of the important issues surrounding prohibited substance use; discuss emerging substances that pose health and safety risks; and propose solutions to those issues to maintain the safety, well-being and performance of both athletes and military service members.
With those goals in mind, members of Major League Baseball, the MLB Players Association and other professional and collegiate sports organizations came together with United States service members and representatives from the USU, Department of Defense, Department of Justice, Food and Drug Administration, United States Anti-Doping Agency and United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, as well as healthcare providers and allied health professionals.
"To be able to share our experience with our colleagues in the military, and to hear from them, what they're facing -- not only does that allow us to continue to learn, but it's our hope that coming out of this conference, we'll figure out ways to work together to continue to respond to, and hopefully, create solutions for these shared challenges," Coyles said.
Approximately 100 participants from sports, military and health backgrounds comprised the audience for Wednesday's series of presentations and panels, which began with introductory remarks from Coyles, Dr. Glen Diehl of the USU, nutrition scientist Andrea Lindsey of the OPSS and Captain Erin Wilfong of the U.S. Navy.
Coyles gave an overview of MLB's drug testing program and the challenges of confronting performance-enhancing substance use in baseball, while also addressing the importance of public awareness and cooperation both between sports leagues and with other spheres.
Lindsey laid out the OPSS mission of giving the tools to service members to use health, wellness and performance products in a responsible way, and its efforts to educate those service members in the same way MLB focuses on educating its players.
"Through our work on the OPSS program, our collaborations allow us to draw attention to areas that need it -- and our concentrated efforts on prevention, education and outreach on PES with our service members is paramount," Lindsey said. "We thank MLB for co-hosting this important landmark event to address this public health issue."
Wilfong presented the U.S. military's strategies for keeping service members off performance-enhancing substances and combatting the prevalence of PED use in the armed forces -- which included reaching out to MLB for the league's expertise in that area. She detailed the DoD's drug testing program and drug policies, including the provisions for PED testing.
“The DoD has a zero-tolerance policy for all abuse or misuse of drugs, and that includes PES," said Wilfong, the director of the Office of Drug Demand Reduction. "These drugs compromise our military’s readiness, as well as the safety and health of our service members. [The DoD's Drug Demand Reduction Program] is increasing efforts to educate and warn our service members on the harms and risks of PES."
All of the presenters stressed the importance of working together to address performance-enhancing substance use, drawing parallels between PES use in sports and the military.
The PES Summit was created to promote collaboration between the sports and military worlds -- starting with awareness campaigns, education initiatives and identifying knowledge and research gaps -- and also to build on the relationship that already existed between the two on the front of athlete and service member health and performance.
In 2019, for example, MLB helped put together and publish a consensus statement on the importance of third-party certification for nutrition products. That paper was co-authored by Coyles and representatives from the MLBPA, DoD and USADA.
That's the type of mutually beneficial result MLB and the other participating organizations hope the PES Summit will help generate moving forward. In fact, one of the stated goals of the PES Summit was that the end result will include a peer-reviewed publication with proposed educational and policy solutions, plus a joint research agenda to execute.
"That paper is still something that we point to when we address our players, and it's something that the DoD points to when they present or try to educate the servicemen and women," Coyles said. "We want similar, tangible outcomes [to come out of the PES Summit] -- whether it be research, another consensus statement, educational materials or potentially even future events like this. We're hoping, coming off of today, to have a list of action items that we can work on together."
Third-party certification of nutritional supplements, and the dietary supplement landscape in general, was also one of the keynote topics of Wednesday's PES Summit, discussed by an expert panel composed of Lindsey, Major Jordan DeMay of the U.S. Army, Dr. Matt Fedoruk of the USADA and Renee Tomb of the PGA Tour. It was moderated by Dave Ellis, the joint dietician of MLB and the MLBPA.
There were also panels on emerging and novel performance-enhancing substances and the public health perspective on PES, including the risks to consumers.
The PES Summit concluded with a discussion of the opportunities for future collaboration and education.
"The consistent thread throughout the day was that servicemen and women can really benefit from hearing from athletes and sports leagues about our experience with performance-enhancing drugs and all of the challenges associated with them," Coyles said. "And on the flip side, working regularly with our team staffs and having the opportunity to engage with our players, they also benefit from hearing from servicemen and women.
"Because they're both high-performing individuals, their lifestyles are similar in a lot of ways. And their goals are to get the most out of themselves -- both from a health perspective and from a performance perspective. There are just so many similarities and areas of overlap that I feel like this is a two-way street of benefits for both groups."