Miranda Pallan is a Professor of Child and Adolescent Public Health at the University of Birmingham and holds an honorary position with the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities as Consultant in Public Health. 

Miranda has around 20 years’ experience of research into public health approaches to improve child and adolescent health behaviours related to obesity and long-term health conditions, and has published widely in this field. She also has experience in the evaluation of local authority-led public health interventions, with current involvement in the leadership of NIHR-funded local authority-focused research initiatives, including the Public Health Intervention Responsive Studies Teams (PHIRST) and the Health Determinants Research Collaborations (HDRC) programmes. 

Prior to her career in Public Health, Miranda trained as a General Practitioner. Her experience of prevention and treatment of ill health at the individual level continues to inform her perspective on population level health improvement and illness prevention. She is especially interested in how the wider determinants of health influence health behaviours in children, young people and families, and how interventions and policies can address these to achieve more equitable health outcomes.

Miranda’s current research encompasses health-related behaviours in children from pre-school age to adolescence, focusing on schools and other educational settings. Two key areas of research are: school food environments and policies, and their influence on child and adolescent nutrition; and school policies relating to the use of mobile phones and social media, and their impact on adolescent mental and physical wellbeing.

Transforming health behaviours in young people through school intervention – are we missing the bigger picture?

The health of children and adolescents in the UK is a key public health concern, both in terms of the immediate health and wellbeing experienced by young people, and the longer-term health consequences in adulthood. Diet and physical activity behaviours are major determinants of short and long-term health outcomes, and many young people to do not meet the recommended nutrition and physical activity guidelines. A more recent concern in this age group is mobile phone and social media use, where there is mounting evidence that use may be detrimental to young peoples’ health and mental wellbeing. Inequalities in physical and mental health and health-related behaviours are evident young people in the UK with those living in disadvantage having less nutritious diets, lower physical activity levels and higher stress. Schools have long been seen as having an important role in the improvement of child and adolescent health through a range of educational and environmental interventions. 

Through this keynote presentation, the role of schools in positively influencing the health-related behaviours of young people will be explored. Using examples of school interventions and policies targeting nutrition, obesity and mobile phone use, the evidence for the success of these interventions will be examined.

Our reliance on schools to address the health and wellbeing of young people and reduce existing inequalities will be discussed in the light of this evidence, and the need for expanded ‘systems’ approaches to address all the key environments within which children and young people are situated will be considered. Finally, the presentation will touch on the importance of retaining the valuable health improvement functions of schools, whilst situating this within a wider approach to transform the health and health-related behaviours of young people.