My work aims to make people healthier. I do this through: (1) research on physical activity interventions; (2) research on genetic and epigenetic aspects of response to exercise/nutrition; and (3) public engagement activities to spread understanding of biomedical science and health research.
My physical activity research focuses on the popular Daily Mile schools physical activity intervention – now done by ~50% of Scottish primary schools. I co-lead a multidisciplinary team of academics including physiologists, developmental psychologists and behaviour change experts. Our projects have attracted a great deal of attention from a wide range of organisations and individuals both at home and abroad including governments, policy makers, television, newspapers, teachers, parents and academics.
Why are we not all the same? Whilst increasing physical activity will improve population level health, the same amount of physical activity will not work equally well for all individuals. I have several genetic and epigenetic projects with the goal of tailoring of health advice to individuals. These focus on understanding inter-individual differences and gender differences in the physiology that underpins our health, disease and sports performance. I am a core member of international consortia in these areas (e.g. Athlome or ELITE).
Throughout my career, I have sought out opportunities to be involved in and drive public engagement. Recently, I have been able to combine this with my physical activity research using a Citizen Science approach to collect data from >11,000 school children. Whatever our research areas, we need to communicate our findings in a way that can be understood by the largest number of people to achieve the maximum impact.
