Professor Janse van Rensburg is Head of the Section Sports Medicine (SSM) at the University of Pretoria (UP). Her work can be categorised into the epidemiology of injury and illness in elite and recreational athletes, and currently covers netball players, trail runners, cyclists and rugby players. Research in this field assists in developing preventative programmes to reduce the risk of injury and illness in athletes.

Prof Van Rensburg also looks at the effect of exercise on diseased populations, specifically those suffering from arthritic disease. This research helps people with chronic disease to be more active, which could contribute to a better quality of life as well as a reduced disease burden.

In addition, she investigates the effects of travelling on athletes to help them optimise their performance after a long journey. To this end, she leads an international group of 26 researchers to acquire consensus on the management of travel fatigue and jet lag. The group consists of people from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, the UK, the USA and Japan. Prof Van Rensburg says this research can be applied to any person travelling for work or holiday purposes.

She published a systematic review on travel fatigue and jet lag in athletes in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM; IF 12.68) in April 2020, and has received an invitation to present [this paper?] at the Royal Society of Medicine’s Sleep and Sports Medicine Day in November 2021.

In June 2020, her article ‘Should people wear a face mask during exercise: What should clinicians advise?’ was published as a blog post in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, and attracted a significant amount of international attention.

An article in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport (IF 3.62) on the effect of lockdown on elite and semi-elite athletes from South Africa, published in May 2020, led to an invitation for Prof Van Rensburg to be part of a global research group that looked at the effects of COVID-19 on athletes. The first paper has been submitted to the Sports Medicine Journal (IF 8.55) and two more papers are in the offing.

Along with international collaborators, she is also the co-developer of a research programme on the epidemiology and risk factors of trail running. The programme involves developing a tool for clinicians to screen trail runners for possible injuries.

Prof Van Rensburg says her research efforts were inspired by the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, where she was a team physician for the South African team. “Sport is my passion, and I am truly blessed to work in this environment.”

Her academic role models are clinicians Prof James Ker, Snr and Prof Stan Brighton, who taught her during her undergraduate and postgraduate studies. She says they taught her to ask questions and not to rely on textbook knowledge.

Prof Van Rensburg hopes for publishing outcomes that will optimise the performance of athletes and improve the quality of life of people with chronic disease.

She is an avid runner and cyclist, enjoys watching sport and loves animals, especially dogs.