Skip to content
Back

About us

Meet the team

Dr Natasha Jones

Clinical Director of Moving Medicine

Dr Hamish Reid

Clinical Director of Moving Medicine

Mrs Lacey Anning

Project Manager – Moving Medicine

Dr Christopher Speers

Active Hospitals Lead

Dr Catherine Lester

Clinical Director of Moving Medicine

Dr Kush Joshi

Paediatric Lead

We believe passionately in empowering people to live active and healthy lives. In the United Kingdom, physical inactivity is the fourth greatest cause of ill health with negative impacts on health, social and economic outcomes for individuals and communities. It is responsible for 1 in 6 UK deaths, which is equivalent to smoking. Importantly, up to 40% of long-term conditions could be prevented if everyone met the UK Chief Medical Officer’s physical activity recommendations.

We know that 27% of the general population are classified as ‘inactive’, meaning they do less than 30 minutes of physical activity (such as walking) per week. 33% of children do less than ½ recommended physical activity for their age. The inactive are at high risk of developing long-term health conditions, a situation that is worsened by the fact that when they develop illness they generally become even less active. In children and young people physical activity plays an important role in preventing the onset of mental health illness and improves the mental health, quality of life and self-esteem in children with long-term conditions. The literature across childhood long-term conditions, like the literature across adult long-term conditions points overwhelmingly to the benefit of physical activity over risk. Healthcare settings consequently provide a unique opportunity to support understanding and awareness of, and greater engagement in, physical activity amongst some of the least active members of our population.

We provide clinicians and allied health professionals with accessible, evidence based, condition specific information to help give advice on physical activity at all stages of children, young peoples and adults treatment pathways. We also provide our toolkit for hospitals to help people be more active during and after their time in hospital The project has been developed in collaboration with experts, professional bodies and charities representing patients and healthcare professionals in each disease area. We are working on new resources including children and have also developed our online course, Active Conversations.

We would love to hear from you if you would like to join this work or have other ideas to improve Moving Medicine