Phil Joined MEND in September 2009, following a successful 21 year career in national roles in Sports Development, where he earned a reputation for fast efficient delivery of national programmes to local communities. At Sport England, Phil led the development and implementation of the £36 million three year Sport Unlimited programme within the Government’s PE and Sport Strategy for Young People - attracting 219,000 ‘semi sporty’ young people and retaining 177,000 of them in ten week courses by the end of year one in March 2009. Other achievements within the strategy included the successful delivery of the Recruit into Coaching, Club Links and Leadership and volunteering programmes. He was also responsible for setting up the National Sport Foundation, including implementing a unique ‘first ever’ sponsorship/CSR investment by Lloyds Pharmacies, where employees ‘referred’ customers to sporting opportunities in the local community; winning funding for and implementing the RESPECT Athlete mentoring programme; and the remodeling and repositioning to the market place of a variety of national programmes including ‘Clubmark’, Sporting Champions, and Sportsmatch. At the Lawn Tennis Association, Phil created and implemented the national Mini Tennis Programme in 2002 which still remains the initial part of the tennis player pathway today.


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Alison Hardy is the behaviour change planning lead on the Department of Health’s Change4Life campaign. She started her career in advertising as an account planner (the discipline that takes responsibility for understanding the end target audience for campaigns: who they are, what they think and feel, and why they behave as they do). She spent eighteen years in the industry, based in London and New York, devising communications strategies for products as diverse as chocolate, toothpaste, diamonds, whisky, champagne, credit cards and baby lotion. In 2006, she joined Dr Foster Intelligence, one of England's leading suppliers of healthcare informatics, to set up a social marketing unit, working on campaigns for the NHS to apply commercial sector marketing tools and techniques to influence health outcomes. Two years later, she was asked by the Department of Health to lead the marketing strategy for childhood obesity prevention, which became Change4Life.



Presentation: Change4Life: how marketing can help change the behaviours that lead to children becoming obese

The presentation will examine the first year of the Change4Life campaign and examine the evidence that it is having an impact on children's diets and activity levels

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Dr. Gavin Sandercock is a lecturer in sport and exercise science at the University of Essex. His principal research interests concerns children and adolescents physical fitness and the factors which affect this important measure of health. After many years doing clinical research, mostly in cardiovascular disease patients, he decided that research into prevention of such diseases might be more fruitful and in 2006 started the East of England Healthy Hearts Study. This study of 8000 10 – 16 years old is the largest ever measurement of English schoolchildren’s fitness levels. While national programmes measure BMI and some large surveys measure physical activity, the East of England Study is the only to measure fitness under conditions of maximal exertion in schoolchildren. So far the study has shown us several important things. Most recently, that fitness levels have declined significantly in recent years in English Schoolchildren. The study has also shown a very promising, association between children’s fitness and active travel habits; these data were recorded with the help of Sustrans. Dr. Sandercock wants to continue the East of England study to look at the longitudinal associations between lifestyle and sociological factors (like deprivation) and English schoolchildren’s fitness levels.



Presentation: Research Results into Children's Fitness Levels.

A study has revealed that the levels of fitness in the UK's children are falling faster than anywhere else in the World.

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Paul Sacher is co-founder and the Chief Research and Development Officer at MEND. Paul is also a Senior Research Fellow and Head of MEND Research at the MRC Childhood Nutrition Research Centre, UCL Institute of Child Health and an Honorary Specialist Paediatric Dietitian at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust. Paul has previously worked in the NHS for more than 11 years and is a recognised author and expert in child health and obesity. His book From Kid to Superkid (Vermilion) has been highly acclaimed by health professionals and parents. He was the child health consultant for Jamie Oliver's "Return to Jamie's School Dinners" (Channel 4) and regularly appeared on "Honey, We're Killing the Kids" (BBC One & Three) and has been interviewed numerous times on National News Channels and regularly appears on BBC Breakfast TV and ITV, This Morning. Paul has been an invited speaker at over 30 national and international conferences and has published over 20 peer-reviewed publications and 3 books. He is a previous holder of a Department of Health, Researcher Development Award and is a current trustee of the National Obesity Forum. Paul is registered with the Health Professions Council and a member of the European Child Obesity Group, the British Dietetic Association, the Association for the Study of Obesity, the Nutrition Society and the USA Obesity Society.

Presentation: Tackling child obesity: MEND

Hear how MEND works in communities to both prevent and treat child obesity using nutrition, physical activity and behaviour change tools.

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Ken has dedicated his career to research and policy in exercise and health. His books include The physical self: From motivation to well-being and Physical activity and psychological well-being. He was senior scientific editor of the 2004 Chief Medical Officer’s report on physical activity and health and is a member of the expert scientific panel for the new Cross Governmental Obesity Strategy Unit. His current research includes exercise and depression in primary care and physical activity in older adults living in different types of neighbourhoods. Ken has produced over 200 research and professional papers and has been writing about physical activity in children since the early 1980s. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Coimbra, is a Fellow of the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Physical Education Association, and the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education. He has been a physical education teacher, coach, and is father of two grown up sons.

Presentation: Motivating Children to Healthier Lives

How can we help children be active and eat well?

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Mike Diaper joined Sport England in November 2006 as Chief of Staff to the then Chairman (Derek Mapp). In April 2008 he became the Executive Director for Children and Young People leading the delivery of the club and community activities within the Government’s PE and Sport Strategy for Young People, which enables youngsters to do 5 hours of sport each week. Mike also leads Sport England’s work with further and higher education to get 300,000 students doing more sport by 2012-13.

Prior to joining Sport England Mike was the Project Director of the National School Sport Strategy working across the Departments for Education and Skills and for Culture, Media and Sport. His leadership of the national strategy saw the percentage of 5-16 year olds doing a minimum of 2 hours of high quality physical education and sport raise from 25% in 2002 to 80% in 2006, beating the school sport public service agreement target for 2006 by 5 percentage points.


Presentation: Sport Unlimited

How listening to youngsters and responding to their needs can get more and more children and young people engaged in sport

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With a base in paediatric exercise science Jonathan has developed an extensive commercial understanding as industry supplier and operator forging the youth market to where it is today. Founding the company at the end of 1999 from a desk and a phone, SHOKK® is now a multi million pound business and over the last decade has firmly established itself in youth fitness as the global brand leader.

As a Loughborough Graduate and qualified PE teacher, Jonathans’ knowledge in the area of youth related exercise goes back over 12 years and has been the cornerstone of the development of SHOKK®. Jonathan is also one of the nation’s leading experts on strength & conditioning in young people and its relevance both to human movement and athletic development/ elite sport. Jonathan’s passion, expertise and peer respect have meant he now sits on number of external panels most notably the NICE committee (NHS), responsible for producing the National Physical Activity Guidelines for Children. He speaks regularly on the international circuit focussing on childhood activity and health.




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Paul joined ASDA in August 2007 as Corporate Affairs Director and is in charge of media and government relations, sustainability, corporate responsibility and regulatory policy. He is also in charge of shaping the company’s health strategy.

Prior to joining ASDA he held a number of senior positions with Compass Group PLC and Granada Group PLC. For the last seven years he was Group Corporate Affairs Director for Compass.

He is a member of the Council of Food Policy Advisers, a board member of the British Retail Consortium and the School Food Trust. He is on the obesity and alcohol leadership groups for the Coalition for Better Health. He was a member of the School Meals Review Panel, the Department of Health / FSA Nutrition Strategy Steering Group and was Chair of Business in the Community’s Plough to Plate Project.

Paul Kelly is the External Affairs and Corporate Responsibility Director at Asda and is also head of the Asda Foundation. Paul’s remit includes corporate responsibility, government relations, sustainability and regulatory policy. Paul helps to shape Asda and Walmart policy on a wide variety of issues including health, agriculture and sustainability.



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