Afroditi Stathi is a Professor of Physical Activity and Community Health at the University of Birmingham, UK. Professor Stathi is an expert in the field of active ageing and public health research, focussing on the development of scalable health behaviour interventions and the co-production of interventions that can help communities to become more activity friendly.

She has secured major grants from all major UK funding agencies and the European Commission with a particular success in attracting funding by the NIHR and has published her research in world leading journals. She has led large, multidisciplinary randomised controlled trials including the successful Retirement in Action study which proved the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a group exercise and behavioural maintenance programme for older people with mobility limitations. This is now implemented in the city of Bristol, UK with plans for national roll-out.

She has contributed to policy development including the UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines. She currently leads the Health Inequalities theme of the Public Health RESearch for Health Consortium [PHRESH] funded by the NIHR School for Public Health, co-directs the UKRI funded ATTAIN network for promoting healthy ageing and tackling health inequalities and leads the Community Health theme in the Centre for Urban Wellbeing at the University of Birmingham.