Professor Cindy Gray

“Using physical activity to address health inequalities: from football clubs to prisons and beyond”

Cindy Gray is an Interdisciplinary Professor of Health and Behaviour at the University of Glasgow. Over the last 20 years, her work has focused on addressing inequalities by engaging high risk groups in making positive changes to their health behaviours, including physical activity. Cindy brings psychological and sociological perspectives to the development and evaluation of complex interventions. She uses co-design with key stakeholders, including representatives of the target populations, to ensure that interventions are acceptable, feasible, effective, and importantly can be integrated into existing practice to support real-world roll-out. Cindy will discuss learnings from the Football Fans in Training (FFIT) intervention, which has used the draw of the football club to engage thousands of men in losing weight through becoming more active and improving their diet. The FFIT model has been adopted worldwide and adapted for different sports settings and target populations (including, most recently, men with prostate cancer). It has also informed the development of other interventions targeting at risk groups, including the Fit for LIFE intervention which supports men in prison to lead a healthier lifestyle. Other projects include Sit Less, Move More, which supports older people to be more active and less sedentary, and the Cycle Nation programme, originally developed as a workplace-based programme, and adapted for community settings including delivery to South Asian women in Manchester.