HEPA 2024 Speakers
Dr. Jane Thornton
Dr. Jane Thornton is a Sport and Exercise Medicine Physician and Clinician Scientist specializing in long-term athlete health and physical activity in the prevention and treatment of chronic disease. She is a Canada Research Chair and Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, with cross appointments in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics and Department of Kinesiology.
She is President elect of the Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine (CASEM), and a senior editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM).
Dr. Thornton represented Canada for over a decade in the sport of rowing, becoming both a World Champion (2006) and Olympian (2008). She now treats athletes and active individuals of all ages and abilities and advocates for movement as medicine.
Adrian Bauman AO MB BS MPH PhD FACSM FAFPHM FAHMS
Adrian Bauman is a public health researcher with a long history of work in chronic disease prevention and the development of prevention research methods. He is Emeritus Professor of Public Health at Sydney University, and co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity. Professor Bauman has worked extensively in the fields of physical activity, obesity, smoking and cardiovascular disease prevention as well as other areas of health promotion and prevention science. He is an authority on the health consequences of physical activity from a public health perspective. He is a committed advocate for scaling up evidence based interventions, and for research translation into practice to achieve population-wide impact and health equity.
Professor Bauman has made many major contributions to prevention science. He was instrumental in identifying the health benefits of moderate physical activity and reduced sitting time. His research also has demonstrated the need for cross-sectoral involvement from areas outside of health in physical activity promotion programs, including diverse sectors such as sports, transport and urban planning to achieve better outcomes. He has developed research methods for evaluating large community-wide public health and health promotion programs, and has contributed to evaluating many public health social marketing and mass media campaigns. Professor Bauman also builds innovative research-policy linkages and conducts policy-relevant research. His international physical activity surveillance work is being used globally as part of WHO non-communicable disease surveillance. He was listed on the Thompson_Reuter (Clarivate) list of the 1% most cited researchers since 2014. He is Foundation Fellow of the Australiasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. Professor Bauman holds several honorary appointments and visiting Professorships (Norway, Denmark, Canada). He was awarded an AO by the Australian Government in 2021.
Prof. Chris Gidlow
Chris Gidlow is a Professor of Applied Health Research, and former Director of the Centre for Health and Development (CHAD), Staffordshire University, and a Fellow of the national Faculty of Public Health. He has a longstanding interest in health inequalities. This started in a physical activity context, before moving to environmental correlates of physical activity and health, and the challenges and interventions for those at the most extreme margins of social disadvantage (‘multiple disadvantage’). He has track record of research around natural environments and health through a Natural England-funded intervention, then as UK Principal Investigator of a four-year €3.5m study of natural environments and health in European (PHENOTYPE). Chris has also led NIHR-funded work around CVD risk identification/management programmes, and more recently, has led city-level evaluations of national programmes to improve support for people experiencing multiple disadvantage. Central to Chris’s work is collaboration with a range of statutory partners (local government, national government, National Health Service), third sector organisations (e.g., lived experience organisations, charities, community organisations) and related networks to ensure relevance and impact of his group’s work.