Movement in Conversation with Dr Sandy Whitelaw & Christopher Topping
This episode explores the understanding of active systems, how they work and how, importantly, they can be used to support more people to be physically active. Our guests guide us through systems thinking with examples from academia and the systems approach in place across Dumfries and Galloway.
Chris is a Health and Wellbeing Specialist within the Health and Social Care Partnership in Dumfries and Galloway. He has over 20 years' experience working in physical activity and public health policy and practice.
In his role, Chris works with local and national organisations and community partners on the design, delivery and evaluation of physical activity policy and evidence-based programmes that aim to enable people to be more physically active. He has contributed to a broad range of research papers sharing collaborative work undertaken in Dumfries and Galloway.
In his local role, Chris is working on embedding the National Physical Activity Pathway across Health and Social Care practice using system-based approaches. This work involves working in partnership on the development of workforce training, integrated referral pathways, alignment of local programmes to referral standards, communication and evaluation.
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Dr. Sandy Whitelaw is a Senior Lecturer, Health and Social Policy at the University of Glasgow. He has a 30-year track record in research and publication in a wide variety of public health topics, with a particular interest in policies that promotion physical activity. He is currently exploring the nature of whole systems approaches generally and their specific expression within physical activity and child healthy weight in Scotland.
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Physical activity promotion insights