Glasgow Caledonian University
School of Health
Established in August 2009 to support the collaborative education of nurses, midwives, social workers and allied health professionals and further develop the University’s world’s leading research, the new School of Health brings together the internationally respected School of Nursing, Midwifery and Community Health and School of Health and Social Care, making it one of Scotland’s largest providers of health care education.
We offer a range of undergraduate, postgraduate and professional development courses. The professional composition of the school provides an ideal platform for inter-professional learning and inter-agency collaboration. In fact, the school is a recognised leader in inter-professional learning in Scotland and internationally.
Our research activities contributed to establishing the university’s position as a world leading centre for health research as a result of the recent UK RAE 2008 success, where 60% of research was ranked world leading or internationally excellent with a further 30% rated of international quality.
Active Living and Ageing Research Group
The organising committee for ICAMPAM2011 focus their efforts within the Active Living and Ageing Research Group (ALARG). This group is lead by Professor Malcolm Granat.
We are exploring the use of monitoring free-living activity as a main outcome measure for interventions and the use of information on free-living activity to inform decision making at all levels. Research is concentrated on the characterisation of free-living activity and sedentary behaviour and their relationship to a range of other biological, physiological and behavioural variables. Key areas of research of this group include the effectiveness of treatment in lower back pain, the relationship of activity to obesity, the use of free-living activity profiles in decision making, activity in the workplace and the development of outcome measures for free-living activity and function to assess the effectiveness of intervention. In addition there is an interest in the development of clinically based instrumentation for the quantification of function
Research goals
- To establish methodologies for the quantification of free-living physical activity and sedentary behaviour through the development of devices, signal analysis methods and outcome measures.
- To establish free-living physical activity monitoring as a routine element of rehabilitation care by demonstrating relevance to outcomes.
- To expand understanding of the relevance of physical activity and sedentary behaviour to health in a wide range of conditions and diseases.
- To develop clinically based instrumentation for the quantification of function.
The Group continues to expand its interests in the area of free-living physical activity monitoring. The expanding capacity and continuing miniaturisation of devices is opening up exciting opportunities for new research initiatives which the Group is exploiting. Physical activity is a key outcome of rehabilitation and clinical interventions. We continue to strive to develop techniques to deliver relevant information to health professionals to allow optimisation of therapies and treatment, whilst also providing useful tools for assessing health and well-being of the general population.
For further information please visit the Glasgow Caledonian University web site.