Move Together Buckinghamshire

This study aims to evaluate Buckinghamshire Council’s ‘Move Together Buckinghamshire’ programme: a physical activity intervention for adults over 50 years old living with a long-term health condition. Move Together Buckinghamshire is being delivered in collaboration with Active in the Community, LEAP, and Age UK Buckinghamshire.

Low physical activity and living with long-term health conditions are associated with poor health and higher demands on health and social care. Move Together Buckinghamshire aims to address these challenges within Buckinghamshire by supporting older adults via a tailored behaviour change approach to be physically active. The long-term aims are to improve healthy life expectancy, reduce social isolation and loneliness and reduce demand on health and social care.

This study will: i) evaluate the impact of Move Together Buckinghamshire on physical activity, health and wellbeing outcomes, and ii) assess the feasibility and acceptability of the programme in participants and providers.

This study presents a mixed-methods independent evaluation of a community-based physical activity intervention targeted at older adults with long-term health conditions. This study builds on other community-based physical activity intervention evaluations, such as ‘ActiveHerts’ and ‘Move Together Oxford’.

This study will collect and analyse data to evaluate Move Together Buckinghamshire using the following methods:

Quantitative questionnaire data with service users
Focus groups with service users
Semi-structured interviews with Physical Activity Specialists
Economic evaluation

This evaluation is funded by Buckinghamshire Council.

Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project

Dr Emma Norris - Dr Emma Norris is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health, within the Department of Health Sciences and Co-Chair of the Health Behaviour Change Research Group. She is Brunel's Academic Lead for online Global Public Health programmes and Programme Lead of MSc Public Health and Health Promotion (online) and MSc Public Health and Behaviour Change (online). Dr Norris is a researcher in behaviour change and health psychology, exploring evidence synthesis of behaviour change interventions, as well as development and assessment of physical activity, smoking cessation and digital interventions. Before joining Brunel, Dr Norris was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London working on the Human Behaviour-Change Project: synthesising published literature on behaviour change using machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. Dr Norris' PhD tested Virtual Field Trips as physically active lesson interventions for primary-school children. Dr Norris is also an advocate for Open Science. She established and Chairs Brunel's Open Research Working Group and is Brunel's UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) Local Network Lead. She is also interested in designing behaviour change interventions to facilitate Open Science behaviours in researchers. Dr Norris is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She is Co-Chair of the European Health Psychology Society’s Open Science Special Interest Group. Emma is an Associate Editor for Health Psychology & Behavioral Medicine and Cogent Psychology. Follow Dr Norris' research and updates on Bluesky: @emmajnorris.bsky.social

Dr Rebecca Hings - Dr Rebecca Hings (pronouns: she/her) is a Senior Lecturer in Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences (Psychology) at Brunel University London. She is an expert in the emotional labour and wellbeing of sport, health, and exercise employees across a range of domains including high-performance sport, the NHS, and third sector sport organisations. Beckie is a founding member of the international Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology Development and Training research group that focuses on advancing the practice of sport and performance psychologists through evidence-based research, education and training. Beckie graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a First Class Honours degree in Sport and Exercise Science and went on to complete her PhD in Organisation Studies at Portsmouth Business School. Beckie's doctoral research examined how and why sports medicine and science practitioners manage their emotions when interacting with clients as part of their professional practice. Prior to her role at Brunel, she was a Research Planning Officer (Impact) at the University of Birmingham.

Related Research Group(s)

Health Behaviour Change - Development and evaluation of theory- and evidence-based health behaviour change interventions, across communicable and non-communicable diseases; evidence synthesis of behaviour change interventions.

Health and Wellbeing Across the Lifecourse - Inequalities in health and wellbeing in the UK and internationally; welfare, health and wellbeing; ageing studies; health economics.

Partnering with confidence

Organisations interested in our research can partner with us with confidence backed by an external and independent benchmark: The Knowledge Exchange Framework. Read more.

Project last modified 24/07/2025