Jenna Panter

PhD student

Environmental influences on physical activity

Email: j.panter ‘at’ uea.ac.uk

Background and experience

After completing a Bsc in Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 2005, Jenna worked as a Research Associate in the School on a project which examined the importance of green spaces for physical activity. This project made use of her geography background, in particular her skills in GIS and was funded by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). Following this, she worked on a large collaborative project alongside researchers from the School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice at UEA and the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge. This project, known as the SPEEDY study (Sport, Physical activity and Eating behaviour: Environmental Determinants in Young people), investigated the social and environmental determinants of physical activity and bodyweight in over 2000 Norfolk school– aged children. During her time at UEA, Jenna has also collaborated with academics from the University of Oxford and the University of Bristol and has co-authored a key British Government Foresight report on the Obesogenic Environment.

Current Work

Jenna is in the second year of her PhD and is supervised by Dr Andy Jones, Prof Graham Bentham (UEA), Dr Esther Van Sluijs and Dr Simon Griffin (MRC Epidemiology Unit). Her work aims to improve current understanding of active commuting, with an emphasis on how individual and environmental factors act together to influence behaviour. Understanding these processes are the first steps in developing interventions to increase the number of children engaging in active travel. Her work aims to use data collected as part of the SPEEDY study, to explore the associations between attitudes, perceptions and objective measures of environment and active travel behaviours.

More about my PhD

Research Affiliation

Zuckerman Institute for Connective Environmental
Research (ZICER). http://www.uea.ac.uk/zicer/

School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia
http://www1.uea.ac.uk/cm/home/schools/sci/env

Publications

Panter, J.R., Jones, A.P., van Sluijs, E.F., Griffin, S.J., Attitudes, social support and environmental perceptions as predictors of active commuting behaviour in school children, JECH, In Press

Panter, J.R., Jones, A.P., Attitudes and the environment as determinants of active travel in adults: What do and don't we know? JPAH, In Press

Van Sluijs, E.M., Skidmore, P.M., Mwanza, K., Jones, A.P., Callaghan, A.M., Ekelund, U., Harrison, F., Harvey, I., Panter, J., Wareham, N.J., Cassidy, A., Griffin, S.J. (2008) Physical activity and dietary behaviour in a population-based sample of British 10-year old children: the SPEEDY study (Sport, Physical activity and Eating behaviour: Environmental Determinants in Young people). BMC Public Health, 2008. 8(8).

Panter, J., Jones, A.P., van Sluijs, E., (2008). Environmental determinants of active travel in children: A review and framework for future research. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 5, 34.

Panter, J., Jones, A.P. (2008). Associations between physical activity, perceptions of the neighbourhood environment and access to facilities in an English city. Social Science and Medicine, 67, 1917–1923

Panter, J., Jones, AP, Hillsdon, M. (2008). Equity of access to physical activity facilities in an English city, Preventive Medicine, 46, 4, 303-307.

Hillsdon, M., Panter, J., Foster, C., Jones, A.P., (2007). Equitable Access to Exercise Facilities, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 32, 6, 506-508.

Jones, A.P., Bentham, G., Hillsdon, M., Foster, C., Panter, J., (2007) Obesogenic Environments Evidence Review: Foresight Tackling Obesities (Long Review)

Last updated at 12:12 on 29/06/2009 by Jenna Panter.

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