Speakers
Dr. Pedro Hallal
Chancellor of the Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Brazil and I co-chair the Global Observatory for Physical Activity.
Dr. Hallal over the past 15 years has held leadership positions in many large research and public health projects and efforts related to global physical activity. Major projects include leading the 2012 and co-leading the 2016 Lancet series on physical activity and global health, creating national and global research and practice courses for physical activity and public health and directing the physical activity and public health courses in Brazil for the last 7 years. His work in the last decade focused on a series of projects involving cohort studies, randomized trials and cross sectional studies in Brazil and other Latin American and European Countries, with PA as one of the main variables.
Dra. I-Min Lee
Harvard University, USA
Her formal training has been in medicine, epidemiology, and public health. She has been conducting studies of physical activity for well over two decades in the following specific areas: (1) Conducting research: I have played major roles in designing, conducting, disseminating and translating the findings of my research studies that include large- scale observational studies and randomized clinical trials. She has been a key member of many national and international expert panels formulating guidelines for physical activity, including the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, the 2010 WHO Global Recommendations on Physical Activity for Health, and the 2013 American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology Guideline on Lifestyle Management to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk. She has worked with multi-disciplinary teams and in large collaborative groups.
Dr. Ross Brownson
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Dr. Brownson has a background in chronic disease epidemiology and bring extensive experience to the project in the design, implementation, and evaluation of physical activity interventions, health policy research, implementation of large population-based surveys, dissemination research, development of measures, and translation of science into public health practice and policy.
Dr. Bill Kohl
Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Texas in Austin, USA.
I have worked in the field of physical activity and health for more than 30 years. He is the Founder of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health.
Dr. Michael Pratt
Director of the Institute for Public Health and the MPH program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
Dr. Pratt's experience over the past 25 years is based on conducting research and networking projects related to physical activity in Latin America. He has published over 100 articles with Latin American co-authors and has focused on developing research skills in the region. Her work over the past decade has focused on developing research capacities at the CDC, WHO and Ministries of Health, and universities in the United States, Latin America, and the world.
Dra. Deborah Salvo
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Brown School of Washington and Faculty member of the Prevention Research Center in St. Louis.
Honorary (adjunct) faculty and researcher position at the Center for Nutrition and Health Research of the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico (INSP).
Dr. Salvo’s research expertise lies in physical activity and spatial epidemiology. Her research has a strong focus on understanding and resolving health disparities affecting Latin American populations and latinos in the US.
Dra. Alejandra Jáuregui
Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública, México
Dr. Alejandra Jáuregui is Chair of the Department of Physical Activity and Healthy Lifestyles of INSP. In 2016 and served as National Coordinator of the Quality Physical Education Policy Project in Mexico of the UNESCO. She served as an expert for the Technical Expert Meeting to Review Draft Global Standards for Nutrition and Physical Activity, Sedentary Behaviour and Sleep for Early Childhood Education and Care Settings of the World Health Organization.
Dr. Juan Rivera
Director General del Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (INSP) y Profesor de Nutrición en la Escuela de Salud Pública.
Dr. Rivera was founding Director of the Center for Research in Nutrition and Health (CINyS) of INSP (2001-2016). He is member of the National Academy of Medicine (ANM), of the American Nutrition Society (ASN), the World Steering Committee on Obesity Prevention, the Executive Council of the International Association of National Institutes of Public Health (IANPHI), the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets for sustainable food systems and was President of the Latin American Nutrition Society (SLAN) from 2015 to 2018.
Dr. Simon Barquera
Director del Centro de Investigación en Nutrición y Salud del Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública de México.
Simón Barquera is a Doctor (UAM) with a Master's and Doctorate from Tufts University. Level 3 member of the SNI (CONACyT), the National Academy of Medicine and the World Federation of Obesity. He has been a consultant for WHO / PAHO, UNICEF, and FAO on obesity and chronic diseases. It has 270 articles in scientific journals and 18,135 citations.
Dra. Andrea Ramírez
Profesora del programa de Maestría en Epidemiología en la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de los Andes en Colombia.
Dr. Ramírez is a physician with a masters in Public Health from Universidad de los Andes,Colombia and Doctor in Epidemiology from Universidad Federal de Pelotas,Brazil. has more than ten years of experience conducting research in physical and health activities in Colombia and other Latin American countries. She is the project director of the Global Physical Activity Observatory - GoPA! Her research interests are epidemiology; Preventive medicine; noncommunicable diseases and epidemiology of physical activity; global public health capacity for the prevention of chronic diseases and the promotion of physical activity; and translation of research, especially in Latin America.
Dr. Akira Hino
Professor at Pontifical Catholic University of Parana, Curitiba, Brazil
Dr. Hino during the last 10 years has been part of several research projects related to built environment and physical activity. The main projects include the GUIA Project (evidence-based physical activity interventions in Latin America), IPEN adults (International Physical Activity and Environment Network), IPEN adolescents, HULAP project (Healthy Urban Living and Ageing in Place) and Our Voice project which is based on the citizen science framework. He is PI of the project Latin American Cities for Healthy Aging in Brazil.
Dr. Nicolás Aguilar
Assistant Professor at Universidad de La Frontera, Chile
Dr. Aguilar has over ten years of experience in conducting physical activity and health research in Chile and other Latin American countries. He has participated as technical expert in different committees, including the New Physical Activity Policy for Chile (2015-2017), the development of new indicators of healthy lifestyle for assessing quality in the public education system for the Ministry of Education Chile and the design of the implementation indicators and strategies for the new movement and nutrition guidelines for children under 5 years with the World Health Organization, among others.
Dra. Cecilia del Campo
Comisión Honoraria para la Salud Cardiovascular & Exercise is Medicine, Uruguay
Dr. Del Campo is a researcher and strategic liaison for physical activity and non-communicable disease prevention at the Cardiovascular Commission of Uruguay (CHSCV), of the Government of Uruguay. Her background is in physical activity, nutrition, behavior change, and chronic disease management. Previously, she has served as the director of the Exercise Is Medicine program in Uruguay. In 2017, she was a key leader in the development of the Physical Activity Guideline for Community (2017) as part of the Ministry of Health of Uruguay.
Dr. Javier Brazo-Sayavera
Professor of Physical Education and Health at the Universidad de la Rivera (Universidad de la Republica) in Uruguay.
Dr. Sayavera’s research expertise is in the assessment of physical fitness among elite athletes, with work in Spain and across Latin America in this topic. Recently, he has moved to conducting randomized trials to understanding the effect of different types of exercise on health markers for non-communicable disease outcomes. He has been actively involved in pushing forward the policy and practice agenda for physical activity promotion and sedentary behavior reduction in Uruguay.
Dr. Rodrigo Reis
Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Dr. Reis is an investigator at the Prevention Research Center, and his research focuses on built and community environment and public health, with particular interest in community interventions for promoting physical activity, the effect of the built environment and active transportation on physical activity and health.
Dr. Inacio Crochemore M Silva
Professor do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação Física e do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Epidemiologia da UFPel
Graduated in Physical Education from Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), Brazil. He obtained a Master and Doctor Degree in Epidemiology in the same University and was a visiting PhD student in the Medical Research Council of the University of Cambridge for one year. Inacio was associate researcher of the International Center for Equity in Health (UFPel) from 2015 to 2020 and was vice-president of the Brazilian Society for Physical Activity & Health (2018-2019). He is currently professor of the Post-graduate Program in Physical Education and the Post-Graduate Program in Epidemiology of UFPel. In addition, he is associated editor of the BMC Public Health and the Brazilian Journal of Epidemiology, and coordinator of Research and Study Group in Accelerometry (GEPEA).
Dra. Olga Lucia Sarmiento
Professor School of Medicine, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota Colombia
Dr. Sarmiento's research focuses on applied multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary research by evaluating community programs in Latin America including the effect of interventions of transport, recreation and urban planning on physical activity behaviors. Currently, she is the principal investigator for Colombia of the SALURBAL (Salud Urbana en América Latina) project.
Dra. Angélica Ochoa-Avilés
University Cuenca-Ecuador
Dr Angélica Ochoa obtained a PhD degree in Applied Biological Sciences at Ghent University-Belgium. She has coordinated several research projects with a special focus on evaluating the physical and food environment in school settings. She was the local coordinator of ACTIVITAL, a large randomized controlled trial aiming to promote healthy eating and physical activity among school-going adolescents in Ecuador. Angélica has experience in designing, implementing, and evaluating culturally appropriate health promotion programs using participatory approaches. Currently, she is part of the Editorial Board of Public Health Nutrition Journal.
James Sallis, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health, University of California San Diego
Dr. Sallis dedicated his career to research that contributes to strategies for increasing physical activity and using the evidence to advocate for better policies, environments, and resources for physical activity. He has studied interventions in schools, universities, and health care settings. He has led and co-led US-based studies of the role of environments in physical activity across the lifespan. He is co-founder of the International Physical Activity and Environment Network (IPEN). In Latin America he has developed several collaborations and participated in physical activity and public health training programs in many countries. www.drjimsallis.org
Dr. David Berrigan
Program Officer at the US National Cancer Institute
David Berrigan, Ph.D., M.P.H., has been a Program Officer in the NCI Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences since 2003. He has a PhD from the University of Utah, and an MPH from UC Berkeley. David has been a member of the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) since its inception and is keenly interested in measurement challenges related to physical activity, obesity and the built and natural environment. He is strongly committed to research aimed at health for all via environments and institutions that support healthy choices, preventive services, and health care regardless of demographic or economic circumstances..
Dr. Anthony Okely
Senior Professor of Public Health at the University of Wollongong, Australia
Dr Okely’s research focuses on movement behaviours (physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep) in children, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries. He led the team that developed the Australian 24-hr Movement Guidelines for Children birth to 5 years. He was part of the Guideline Development Group for the WHO Global guidelines on physical activity, sedentary and sleep behaviours in children under 5 years of age, and for similar guidelines in South Africa, Canada and the United Kingdom. He currently leads an international study of movement behaviours in the early years called SUNRISE, which involves 40 countries, 25 of which are low- or middle-income.
Dra. Abby King
Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Epidemiology & Population Health, and Professor of Medicine (Stanford Prevention Research Center) at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Dr. King is Professor of Epidemiology & Population Health and of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and is founder and Faculty Director of the Our Voice Citizen Science Initiative and Global Network. Recipient of the Outstanding Scientific Contributions in Health Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association, her research focuses on the development, evaluation, and translation of public health interventions to reduce chronic disease and its key behavioral risk factors.
She uses state-of-the-art communication technologies, community-based participatory research perspectives, and citizen science approaches to address health disparities among disadvantaged populations worldwide.
Dr. King has served on a number of government taskforces in the U.S. and abroad, including membership on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Scientific Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2020. She co-chaired the USDHHS 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans Advisory Committee and was one of 10 U.S. scientists honored by the Association of American Medical Colleges in 2014 for outstanding research targeting health inequities. She served as President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) from 2011-2012. Her research on citizen science to promote healthy environments for all has been honored with an international excellence award in addition to Stanford Medical School’s inaugural faculty community engagement award and SBM’s 2018 Research to Practice Award. In 2019, she received the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity’s inaugural lifetime achievement award, and in 2020 the Society of Behavioral Medicine’s Distinguished Scientist Award.
Dr. Susan Vorkoper
Global Health Research and Policy Analyst at the Fogarty International Center, U.S. NIH
At the Fogarty International Center, Dr. Vorkoper leads projects on childhood obesity prevention in Latin America and among Latino populations in the US and adolescent HIV implementation science among others.
Dr. Leandro García
Lecturer in Complexity Science in Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Dr. Garcia is an expert in the application of complex systems science in public health, and in the intersection between physical activity behaviour and health. His research combines epidemiological and complex systems approaches and methods to investigate the links between behavioural, environmental, social, and policy determinants of population health.
Dr. Oscar Incarbone
Rector Instituto Universitario YMCA
Dr. Incarbone, PhD in sports science, has dedicated his career to the research and promotion of sport and physical activity in Argentina and internationally. In Argentina he has worked as the National Director of Sport Policy and Planning, the Coordinator for the National Program "Fight against Sedentarism", among other positions. He also carries various international responsibilities including member of the Global Coalition of YMCA Universities, colaborator for the Global Observatory of Physical Activity, and Secretary General of the Physical Activity Network of the Americas.
Dr. Victor Matsudo
Scientific Director and President of the Center of Studies of the Physical Fitness Research Laboratory from São Caetano do Sul, CELAFISCS
Victor Matsudo is a medical doctor and researcher specialized in orthopedics, traumatology, and sports medicine. He currently works as a Professor of Medicine at Gama Filho University and is the Chairman of the Agita São Paulo Program. Internationally, he is a founding member and chairman of the Physical Activity Network of the Americas, a founding member and executive board member of the Agita Mundo Network, and a member of the WHO’s International Consultative Group on Active Living. Academically, Dr. Matsudo is well published both in and out of Brazil with a now 7th edition book, “Tests in Sport Sciences”, and various publications investigating a variety of topics including sedentary behavior, physical activity, the built environment, and related health effects.
Dr. Brigid M. Lynch
Deputy Head, Cancer Epidemiology, Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Dr Lynch is a cancer epidemiologist whose research focuses on how physical activity and sedentary behaviour are associated with cancer risk, biological mechanisms underlying risk, and health outcomes for cancer survivors. Her research interests include applying causal inference methods to help advance the field of physical activity epidemiology. Dr Lynch leads a number of studies including World Cancer Research Fund funded systematic reviews of mechanistic pathways linking physical inactivity with breast cancer risk, a study collecting hip and thigh-worn accelerometer data from approximately 4,000 participants of the ABC Study (https://www.abcstudy.com.au/), and a series of Mendelian randomization analyses of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and cancer risk. Dr Lynch is the President of the Australasian Epidemiological Association and was the inaugural co-Chair of the both the Sedentary Behaviour and Epidemiology Councils of the International Society for Physical Activity and Health.
Dr. Ulf Ekelund
Department of Sport Medicine, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences
Dr. Ekelund’ s main research areas include patterns and trends in population levels of physical activity, determinants of physical activity and sedentary behaviours and the role of sedentary time and physical activity for preventing non-communicable diseases across the life course. Dr. Ekelund has been a key member on many national and international expert panels and served on the WHO’s physical activity guideline development group in 2019 to 2020.