Active Living

Research themes

Find out about the areas of research we investigate.

Health Inequalities in Active Living

Communication impacts upon every clinical encounter and is considered the most important aspect of practice that health professionals have to master. This research programme includes projects within 3 key strands: communication and decision-making; improving patient experience; and improving health and promoting independence using technologies for people with back pain. 

Movement Quality for Optimal Musculoskeletal Health​

The way we move can affect how healthy our joints are and how well we function. Our research aims to enable good quality movement to make exercise safer by improving function and protecting joints from injury or disease, for lifelong active living.

Optimisation of Foot and Ankle Musculoskeletal Health for Active Living

Activity for health is a major part of modern life at all ages, but foot and ankle problems can seriously affect this. Through our multidisciplinary research our aim is to enhance musculoskeletal foot health to enable lifelong active living. On this theme we offer the Bsc Podiatry.

People Powered Prosthetics

The People Powered Prosthetics Group is committed to using research to improve the lives, limbs and rehabilitation of anyone effected by limb loss. We carry out multidisciplinary working with internal and external University contributors across Allied Healthcare, Prosthetic and Orthotic, engineering, healthcare psychology, computer science, enterprise, service and social statistics and demography.  Most importantly, all of our work and research is user-led working in partnership with service users to ensure all activity is valuable and meaningful addressing what really matters. We also take a research-led teaching approach running our flagship multidisciplinary flagship programme, MSc in Amputation and Prosthetic Rehabilitation.

Physical Activity and Cardiometabolic Health (PAC-Health)

Regular physical activity helps prevent, treat, and manage non-communicable diseases, such as heart disease, stroke and many cancers. We design, implement, and evaluate physical activity and lifestyle interventions, across the lifespan, that aim to:

  • improve health literacy
  • effectively prevent health ‘events’ (eg stroke, heart attack) using co-designed, cost-effective, primary and secondary prevention approaches
  • manage long-term conditions for better health and quality of life

We work in both high-income countries (HICs) and low-middle-income countries (LMICs), tackling the UN Sustainable Development Goals of Good Health and Wellbeing (SDG 3) and Reducing Inequalities (SDG 10). 

In this theme, our high-quality research is linked with our educational portfolio for pre-registration, undergraduate, and postgraduate students in many nursing, midwifery, and allied health professions’ programmes. It also includes our new MSc and CPD modules in Clinical Exercise Physiology (in development). The CEP modules are set to start in September, 2025.