Dr Sally Barber is the Director of physical activity research at Born in Bradford, Bradford Institute for Health Research. She has over a decade of experience designing and evaluating interventions to tackle children’s inactivity, increase active play, and reduce health inequalities.
Currently, she leads the development and evaluation of a whole system physical activity intervention, JUMP, funded by Sport England, to improve physical activity and health outcomes for children aged 5-14 years old. She is also the principal investigator for an NIHR Programme Development Grant exploring how play can be designed into urban spaces, and how these spaces can then be used to build a durable habit of play.
Sally leads the Bradford team within the Bristol Biomedical Research Centre’s diet and physical activity theme. She supports the collaboration between Bradford Institute for Health Research and the University of Bristol and oversees projects relating to diet and physical activity which focus on tackling health inequalities, such as:
- How Islamic religious settings can be used to prevent childhood obesity
- How green spaces can better be designed and used to support teenage girls to be physically active
Sally also leads the healthy bodies topic within the healthy families theme of the Yorkshire and Humber Applied Research Collaboration.