 Hi my name is Taylor Morgan and today I'll be interviewing Professor Phil Morgan or dad from the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle. So dad can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hey thanks Tay. I was born into Nelliquent. I think it was a Tuesday morning around 8.40 a.m. Sorry dad can we skip forward to the part about when you started in university? Okay sure Fair enough. Yeah sure. Well you know what? It goes as far back as 992 which is like was that 28 years ago? And I'm only 40-ish. It's a big part of my life. Ish ish. So I've done my undergraduate degree my PhD all the way through to professor at University Newcastle and some people say well that shouldn't you be moving around but I love the university and still do. So what degree did you study at the University? I wanted to always want to be a PE teacher but people saying oh no you should do a physio degree you'd love that. So it wasn't at University of Newcastle yet so I was going to do a Bachelor of Arts for a year then switch over to physio when it came to Newcastle and I wasn't really sure still what I wanted to do and I chose four subjects and one of them I chose was philosophy and you know I chose that. I haven't told you this either but because of the abbreviation the subject code was Phil101 and I thought that was a good message. Dad tip one don't choose subjects based on the abbreviation matching your name. So I ended up taking the advice of my mom actually who was like you need to be outside. I was an active love sports and exercise sort of kid and so yeah it still are exactly so I transferred to a Bachelor of Health and Physio Education best decision I'd ever made. Dad tip follow your heart do things you love find a career you enjoy and that was fantastic didn't get a job out of uni but I got nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford which is a really great opportunity and I guess what a PhD's called at Oxford? D-Phil. So I was a bit wary yeah it could have been so but I didn't get it I missed out that's okay I came back and did a PhD in Education at the University of Newcastle doing that research project made me realise the impact you can have through research and how important it is. What is your research focused on now and why is it important? Sure so my PhD was in focusing on improving primary school health and physical education but I've kind of transferred with a with a greater focus on promoting family physical activity and healthy eating but also understanding what influences families and what are the best strategies to advise families to be more active and to eat healthily and this is just so important firstly because how important optimal dietary and physical activity behaviours are for our physical and mental health but do you realise if you looked at families in terms of their weight status how many fruit and veggies they eat their physical activity levels that it'd be less than 1% of the Australian population would meet the actual guidelines for those so we live in an environment at the moment it's obesity promoting activity sapping that's really challenging it promotes kilojoule dense nutrient poor quality foods and they're really accessible so it is actually a huge challenge people say you're just trying to get families active that sounds pretty easy but understanding the psychology how to motivate families how to how to give them the knowledge and skills how to give them that evidence-based strategies that can make a huge difference in not only their physical activity levels and health eating but the quality of life so we realise that it's not a one-size-fits-all approach and targeted programs were really important so we've explored the differential impact of targeting different family members so we've done target developed and evaluated targeted programs for families whatever your family unit is for mums and daughters for dads and daughters as you know and when we started doing this work with fathers we realised that fathers are just not involved in parenting programs internationally we did a review and found that of all the parenting programs ever done in this field six percent of participants are dads so they play a unique and independent role so we've done lots of work with fathers so we've done healthy dads healthy kids I think you've done all these programs and dads with sons and daughters promoting health eating and that's been adapted in the UK we've done a feasibility trial with Hispanic fathers in the US which is really exciting it was amazing and we've just found out we're successful in getting a grant to adapt it in Scotty's prisons with incarcerated fathers and we've also got healthy youngsters healthy dads which is for preschool age children and we've got our daughters and dads active in a powered program which came out of University of Newcastle we're now got a partnership we're rolling out across New South Wales and doing sport specific variants we've just done daughters and dads cricket we've partnered with women in sport in the UK to do to roll out the English football club so just some amazing developments showing the real need and impact that it can have That's awesome, that's really cool. It's seriously really challenging time moments so what role can physical activity and exercise play? Well this this is really challenging times and everyone's got different contexts and need to filter this information but physical activity is just so important if you look at even the percentage of the population meeting physical levels at all ages when you use objective measures not just asking people how active they are, you know, predominance and accelerometer these sorts of gadgets you know it's usually around 10 to 20% would meet those guidelines for physical activity and that's preschoolers, children, teenagers, adults somewhere in between there so most of the population don't need physical activity levels and they're so important and there is overwhelming incredible remarkable evidence showing the association between being active and your holistic health and that's from systematic reviews so that means that it's not just one study a group of researchers got let's find every single study that's established the association between physical activity and heart disease for example physical activity and depression and so it's really good quality evidence so we can believe it's important and this is at any life stage doesn't matter how old you are, doesn't matter whether you're a boy or a girl what race, ethnicity the association still remains strong and if you look at physical activity for example for chronic disease risk reductions so type 2 diabetes, stroke or heart disease being active means you reduce the risk of those chronic diseases by 20 or 30% and even mortality, even dying 20 or 30% yeah and if you look at fitness being aerobically fit like heart and lung fitness then the risk reductions for each of those chronic diseases doubles to 40 to 60% so being fit as well, getting your heart rate up being aerobically fit is potent, hugely important and then we, the mental health benefits of physical activity is also extremely important reducing anxiety and stress and depression and studies have shown it's even more crucial than drugs, taking drugs for those particular ailments and another point, I can't, I just can't go doing physical activity increases your blood flow which impacts on your memory attention and cognitive function so I was able to remember that but the research in this field of cognition is fascinating as well like it's exercise is the leading strategy for Alzheimer's and dementia so it's just hugely important but also there's social benefits and emotional benefits to being active and economic and educational and environmental so finally I just say if you could take a pill that conferred all the health benefits of physical activity it would be the most prescribed pill in the history of medicine the biggest blockbuster in the history of humanity so hugely important so dad what would be your best tips? I'd say get up, get out and get down get up, get out and get down, what does that mean? sounds like it's the makings of a TikTok we can do get up, get up, get down maybe not, okay it's actually get up, up, up, get out and get down so the first thing, get up, get your steps up so internal physical activity is really important on most preferably all days of the week every step counts people used to think I've got exercise half an hour a day and otherwise if I can't find time for that there's no point think of all those little bite sized pieces of movement that you can do throughout the day because what we do know now is the benefits of activity you're accumulated so that five minute walk there, that ten minute walk there they add up as part of your benefit so thinking about how you can increase the amount of movement you can get in a day overall so a lot of people are like sitting all day and just doing one exercise about and still think oh that's healthy but just think about how you can increase your steps throughout the day and there's a dose response relationship with physical activity the more you do the better and it doesn't matter what form of movement it is all the evidence we have for the benefits of physical activity a lot of it is just simply for walking so that's really accessible so parking further away thinking about well it's a 20 minute drive to somewhere but I can drive 15 or 18 minutes and then walk the rest of the way think about ways you can do that so what is your favourite physical activity saying? think of movement as an opportunity not an inconvenience look at that you get there and go oh no I can't get a park this is ridiculous hang on park further away here's an opportunity for movement given how many people meet feel the titty guidelines rather than an inconvenience so movement is really important the second get up is getting your heart rate up so doing some exercise sessions on most preferably all days of the week as well some higher intensity aerobic fitness which has independent health benefits there's just heaps of apps and YouTube clips and smorgasbord of activities you can do so heart rate up steps up and finally I'd say to stand up let's just stand up now I guess to have to break up prolonged bouts of sitting as a whole emerging science in this area of how important that is and I'd say every 30 or 60 minutes you need to stand up replace sitting with some light physical activity think of breaks you have when you're working put your phone away have your printer away from your office as a whole range of ways we can increase opportunities to stand think of standing as an opportunity not an inconvenience get out it's really fascinating studies have shown the benefits to exercising and being outside so depending on the situation try and get outside if you can exercise outside it's even better exercising is really important exercising outside can give you additional benefit and get down so this is just holistic approach to say sleep right impacts on your activity levels and energy levels stretch yoga parties relax and also socialize so what advice would you give families to keep moving get up up up get out and get down they can apply that the children it's all applicable for families and actually I'm interested in developing as you know about is my film crew and sound crew and production team to help families at the moment we're releasing a YouTube channel called family movement with professor Phil so I encourage people to subscribe to that we're going to release a lot of our content from all of our award-winning programs and it's pretty good fun making those they look out for those as well but just five or six quick tips for families I would say be active together it's called co-physical activity in our studies that we've done which is really fascinating we've shown the families who are active together not necessarily our mum and dad go for a run and kids are at home they're modeling the behavior but doing the activity together not only makes them more active okay that makes sense but we found that it actually explains self-esteem in children and explains the quality of the relationship in families so that's really powerful findings to show being active together brings families closer together and makes kids feel better about themselves pick physical activities you can enjoy and one of the theories that we operationalize is called self-determination theory not to get too heavy and it's primary tenets of autonomy relatedness and competence and that just means to increase motivation within families and for kids autonomy give them choice what do you want to do today do you want to work out play soccer go for a walk give them options exactly relatedness do it together do you want to do it with me do you want to do some one-on-one sounds good and competence can you help them understand fitness technique and exercise technique like we've been doing at the back how to do various exercises how to do various sports skills is really important and so in our YouTube channel we'll show how helping kids with sports skills families have a role helping them with their exercise technique they have a role and doing some rough-and-tumble play which is pretty fun and final couple of tips I would say is ink it don't think it that's one of our favorite sayings write it down get your exercise and activity as a routine so it's locked in monitor your activity record it plan goals we could set and say okay we've got touch football so we're gonna play and it's locked in it becomes part of our routine where you don't have to slip into that day where you go I'm not really feeling like it today so that's really important having screen rules screen time rules screens in the bedroom and screens before school are really important and finally I would just say to families don't forget the importance of free play unstructured play for kids get outside and they can just be kids so hope those tips were helpful that's awesome thank you so much thank you for you a great job hey do you want to go do a workout let's go