Rate My Professor Andy Daly-Smith

Professor Andy Daly-Smith is Professor of physical activity and child health in the Faculty of Health Studies at the University of Bradford. Holding a Doctor of Philosophy, he leads the Wolfson Centre for Applied Research Healthy Childhood theme and serves as Associate Director of the Research Institute for Health and Social Care. His career includes previous roles as a Lecturer at Leeds Beckett University from 2006 to 2017. Daly-Smith is Research Director for the Sport England-funded Join Us: Move Play programme, a whole-systems intervention to increase physical activity among children aged 5 to 11 in multi-ethnic, socio-economically deprived communities. He is actively involved in the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research and the Born in Bradford birth cohort study. In 2018, he co-delivered a TEDxEducation talk on physically active learning, highlighting positive impacts on education performance and health.

Daly-Smith's research focuses on the design, development, and evaluation of behaviour change interventions for physical activity and health in children, with emphasis on practice-driven approaches, whole-school systems change, physically active learning, executive function, academic performance, and child health. He led the co-development of the Creating Active Schools framework, the first UK-based whole-school physical activity model co-created with 50 regional, national, and international stakeholders, now widely adopted across the UK to drive systems change. Key publications include 'Implementing physically active learning: Future directions for research, policy, and practice' (Journal of Sport and Health Science, 2020), 'Behaviours that prompt primary school teachers to adopt and implement physically active learning: a meta synthesis of qualitative evidence' (International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 2021), 'Reframing physically active learning as movement-centred pedagogy: a European priority action framework' (International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 2023), 'Assessing the Impacts of Creating Active Schools on Organisational Culture for Physical Activity' (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2022), and 'Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Whole-System Intervention to Increase the Physical Activity of Children Aged 5 to 11 Years (Join Us: Move Play, JU:MP): Protocol for a Quasiexperimental Trial' (JMIR Research Protocols, 2023). His contributions extend to leading WHO reports on physical activity in schools and influencing Ofsted recommendations.