TES Get Active is backed by a team of four experts, who will be sharing their opinions and expertise over the course of the campaign.
Professor Neil Armstrong is the director of the children’s health and exercise research centre at Exeter university. The centre won the Queen’s anniversary prize for higher education in 1999 for its research into children’s physical activity patterns and the use of exercise to promote young people’s health and well-being.
The author of eight books and more than 400 other publications on children’s health, Professor Armstrong is also professor of paediatric physiology and head of the school of sport and health sciences at Exeter university. He writes on the Platform page (page 21) today, saying that the Government and local education authorities must act urgently to provide the resources needed to tackle child obesity.
Dr Toni Steer is a nutritionist at the Medical Research Council’s human nutrition research unit in Cambridge and works in the nutrition communications group.
Dr Steer has a particular interest in making nutrition science and research accessible and will be contributing articles and comment to The TES about diet.
Dr Lorraine Cale is senior lecturer at the school of sport and exercise sciences and director of PE teacher education at Loughborough university.
She has researched physical activity and health promotion in young people, focusing on schools, and has taught courses in exercise and health for teachers. She has co-authored a number of health-related modules for the National PE and school sport professional development programme. Dr Cale will be the first to appear on the Get Active website’s “Ask the Expert” forum.
Professor Sir Charles George has been medical director at the British Heart Foundation since 1999. He is a member of the Government’s task force for coronary heart disease, Minap (the myocardial infarction national audit project) and the scientific advisory committee of the Association of Medical Research Charities. Sir Charles joined the General Medical Council in 1986 and became chairman of its education committee in 1994. He was knighted in 1998 for services to medicine and medical education.
From next week in TES Teacher, the experts will contribute a weekly column which will dispel popular myths and attempt to bring some perspective to the obesity debate. The first of these, by Dr Toni Steer, will question whether childhood obesity in the UK is actually at crisis point.
