12th annual meeting and 7th conference of HEPA Europe
28-30 September 2016, Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
The event was kindly hosted by Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University, UKCRC Centre of Excellence for Public Health (Northern Ireland).
This year's conference theme was "Walking the Walk": what should the public health policy response be to the evidence for physical activity? It hosted a record number of 295 participants from 28 countries across and beyond the European Region.
Events included the 7th HEPA Europe conference on 28-30 September with enlightening and thought-provoking plenary speakers:
- Research translation and scaling up – is this the “holy grail” of physical activity policy? (Adrian Bauman, University of Sydney)
- Getting the numbers right: step counting indices for practice and policy (Catrine Tudor-Locke, University of Massachusetts Amherst)
- Campaigning to get women active: what does the evidence say? (Jennie Price, Sport England)
The last conference closed with an engaging debate on the health effects of sitting. The event included 9 symposia, 15 parallel oral sessions, an Early Career Researchers Award Session and 74 poster sessions. Nine HEPA Europe working groups invited delegates to participate in sessions to discuss work progress and to define next steps.
HEPA Europe also held its annual meeting on 30 September 2016, including an update on activities of the previous year, discussion of an updated vision statement for HEPA Europe and adoption of the 2016-2017 work programme.
