Andy Peter Jones

Norfolk County Council · Directorate of Public Health

Background Screen behaviours are highly prevalent in young people and excessive screen use may pose a risk to physical and mental health. Understanding the timing and social settings in which young people accumulate screen time may help to inform the design of interventions to limit screen use. This study aimed to describe diurnal patterns in adole...

The use of multi-agency partnerships, including research-practice partnerships, to facilitate the development, implementation and evaluation of public health interventions has expanded in recent years. However, gaps remain in the understanding of influences on partnership working, and their capacity to facilitate and use evaluation, as well as the...

Ecological studies often use supermarket location as a proxy measure of the food environment. In this study, we used data on sales at a leading mainstream supermarket chain to explore how area-level supermarket use is associated with overweight and obesity in English adults. Sales data were aggregated to local authority level and joined to a nation...

Objective: This research took a co-design approach to develop a social intervention to support people affected by a cancer diagnosis to be physically active. Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with five key stakeholder groups: (1) adults with a recent breast or prostate cancer diagnosis; (2) family and friends of cancer patients; (...

Background Screen behaviours are highly prevalent in adolescents and may be adversely associated with physical and mental health. Understanding how screen behaviours inter-relate with physical activity and sleep may help to clarify pathways through which they impact health and potential routes to behaviour change. This cross-sectional study examine...

Exposure to natural environments, known as greenspace, appears to positively influence health, yet the mechanisms are unclear. Given that gut microbiota are associated with inflammatory disorders more prevalent in urban areas and individuals with lower greenspace exposure, microbiota may act as a mediator between greenspace and health. Using 2443 p...

BACKGROUND If the most evidence-based and effective smoking cessation apps are not selected by smokers wanting to quit, their potential to support cessation is limited. OBJECTIVE This study sought to determine the attributes that influence smoking cessation app uptake and understand their relative importance, to support future efforts to design an...

Background: Digital health devices, such as health and well-being smartphone apps, could offer an accessible and cost-effective way to deliver health and well-being interventions. A key component of the effectiveness of health and well-being apps is user engagement. However, engagement with health and well-being apps is typically poor. Previous st...

Many adults accumulate considerable time in screen-based behaviours, some of which have been associated with negative physical and psychological health outcomes. The aims of this study were to characterise contemporary patterns of screen-based behaviours and describe their temporal trends by global region, age, sex and education. Data covering the...

School active travel contributes to young people's physical activity levels, yet the prevalence is low, and declines with age. Based on determinants from the social-ecological model we investigated changes in school travel behaviour over the transition from childhood to adolescence in participants from the baseline and four-year follow-up of the SP...

Understanding the preferences of potential users of digital health products is beneficial for digital health policy and planning. Stated preference methods could help elicit individuals’ preferences in the absence of observational data. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) is a commonly used stated preference method; a quantitative methodology that a...

Background: Community-based physical activity programs typically evolve to respond to local conditions and feedback from stakeholders. Process evaluations are essential for capturing how programs are implemented, yet often fail to capture delivery evolution over time, meaning missed opportunities for capturing lessons learned. Methods: This rese...

Background Family-based physical activity promotion presents a promising avenue for promoting whole-family physical activity, but high-quality research is lacking. Objectives To assess the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of FRESH (Families Reporting Every Step to Health), a child-led online family-based physical activity i...

UNSTRUCTURED Understanding the preferences of potential users of digital health products is beneficial for digital health policy and planning. Stated preference methods could help elicit individuals’ preferences in the absence of observational data. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) is a commonly used stated preference method; a quantitative metho...

Sedentary behaviors are highly prevalent in youth and may be associated with markers of physical and mental health. This systematic review and meta‐analysis aimed to quantify the age‐related change in sedentary behavior during childhood and adolescence. Ten electronic databases were searched. Inclusion criteria specified longitudinal observational...

Environmental equity (EE) has become internationally recognized as an important research field, but in Japan limited quantitative research is available. In this paper we report the results of a quantitative study that tested whether objective and perceived accessibility to parks is disproportionately distributed between the affluent and the poor in...

We estimated the influence of human disturbance and environmental factors on territory establishment in common ringed plovers Charadrius hiaticula and Eurasian oystercatchers Haematopus ostralegus, to inform the conservation of these species. We examined a 212 km stretch of coastline in the United Kingdom in 2003, mapping all breeding pairs of both...

Introduction: Sarcoidosis-associated fatigue (SAF) is a common clinical problem with limited treatment options. This study was undertaken to determine the feasibility of performing a definitive trial to determine the clinical efficacy methylphenidate in SAF. Methods: This was a parallel-arm, double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised controlled...

BACKGROUND Digital health media, such as health and wellbeing smartphone apps, could offer an accessible and cost-effective way to deliver health and wellbeing interventions. A key component of the effectiveness of these apps is user engagement. However, engagement with health and wellbeing apps is typically sub-optimal. Previous studies have ident...

Background Digital health devices, such as health and well-being smartphone apps, could offer an accessible and cost-effective way to deliver health and well-being interventions. A key component of the effectiveness of health and well-being apps is user engagement. However, engagement with health and well-being apps is typically poor. Previous stud...

Objectives: To assess the geographical variation in tobacco price (cigarettes and roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco) in convenience stores across Scotland and how this relates to neighbourhood income deprivation, tobacco retail outlet density and urban/rural status. Methods: Tobacco price data from 124 566 shopping baskets purchased in 274 convenience s...

Background Interventions to improve physical activity behaviour are a core part of public health policy and practice. It is essential that we evaluate these interventions and use the evidence to inform decisions to improve population health. Evaluation of ‘real-world’ interventions provide an opportunity to generate practice-relevant evidence, howe...

Objectives. User engagement with health and wellbeing apps is typically poor. Understanding factors that influence engagement can inform the design of more engaging apps. This study explored users’ experiences of and reasons for engaging and not engaging with health and wellbeing apps. / Methods. UK-based adults (N=17) interested in using a health...

BACKGROUND Health and wellbeing smartphone apps can be identified through different routes, including via curated health app portals, but little is known about people’s experiences of this. OBJECTIVE This study explored how people select health apps online and their views on curated portals. METHODS Eighteen UK-based adults were recruited and ask...

Background Health and well-being smartphone apps can provide a cost-effective solution to addressing unhealthy behaviors. The selection of these apps tends to occur in commercial app stores, where thousands of health apps are available. Their uptake is often influenced by popularity indicators. However, these indicators are not necessarily associat...

Background Prevalence of depression is increasing in young people, and there is a need to develop and evaluate behavioural interventions which may provide benefits equal to or greater than talking therapies or pharmacological alternatives. Exercise could be beneficial for young people living with depression, but robust, large-scale trials of effect...

The environments in which young and middle-aged adults live may influence their physical activity (PA) behaviours. These associations are less clear among older adults. We estimated cross-sectional and prospective associations of population density, junction density, and land use mix and perceived active living environments with accelerometer-asses...

Introduction: This study assessed the feasibility and acceptability of FRESH (Families Reporting Every Step to Health), a theory-based child-led family physical activity (PA) intervention delivered online. We also assessed the preliminary effectiveness of the intervention on outcomes of interest and whether pre-specified criteria were met to progr...

The benefits of physical activities for those living with moderate to advanced dementia are well documented and include improved well-being and quality of life. What is less well known is how best to deliver such activities to make them meaningful for those taking part and, more generally, how to develop good practice guidance for working with this...

Background Family physical activity (PA) promotion holds promise, but there is little high quality research evaluating its potential and impact. Following successful feasibility assessment and adaption, this pilot study assessed the acceptability of FRESH, a child-led family-based PA intervention delivered online, and explored preliminary effective...

Background: Evaluation of physical activity interventions is vital to inform, and justify, evidence-based policy and practice to support population-wide changes in physical activity. Several evaluation frameworks and guidance documents have been developed to facilitate the evaluation and reporting of evaluation studies in public health. However, t...

Background: Physical activity and dietary change programmes play a central role in addressing public health priorities. Programme evaluation contributes to the evidence-base about these programmes; and helps justify and inform policy, programme and funding decisions. A range of evaluation frameworks have been published, but there is uncertainty ab...

ABSTRACT Background: The public health impact of health and well-being digital interventions is dependent upon sufficient real-world uptake and engagement. Uptake is currently largely dependent on popularity indicators (eg, ranking and user ratings on app stores), which may not correspond with effectiveness, and rapid disengagement is common. There...

Poster accepted for SBM Annual Scientific Meeting, 2020. San Francisco, US.

Physical inactivity is a key risk factor for a wide range of non-communicable diseases, yet a large proportion of the population fail to meet recommended physical activity levels. Healthcare has been identified as a key setting in which to intervene to encourage physical activity behaviour change. However, those working in the healthcare sector mus...

Background: Living in urban or rural environments may influence children's levels of physical activity and sedentary behaviours. We know little about variations in device-measured physical activity and sedentary levels of urban and rural children using nationally representative samples, or if these differences are moderated by socioeconomic factor...

Introduction: Recent evidence suggests fatality risks for cyclists may be increasing in Britain. Understanding how to increase levels of cycling while keeping risk low is paramount. Educating drivers about cyclists may help with road safety, and mass-media messaging is a possible avenue, potentially utilizing digital displays screens in public are...

Poster presented at UK Society of Behavioural Medicine (UKSBM) Annual Scientific Meeting 2020. Bath, UK.

Background Living in a greener neighbourhood may reduce the risk of developing incident cardiovascular disease, but evidence is limited by reliance on cross-sectional comparisons. We use data from a longitudinal study with a time-independent measure of risk to explore the association between exposure to greenspace and cardiovascular disease. Metho...

BACKGROUND The public health impact of health and wellbeing digital interventions is dependent upon sufficient real-world uptake and engagement. Uptake is currently dependent largely on popularity indicators (e.g. ranking and user ratings on app stores), which may not correspond with effectiveness, and rapid disengagement is common. Therefore, ther...

Background: The public health impact of health and wellbeing digital interventions is dependent upon sufficient real-world uptake and engagement. Uptake is currently dependent largely on popularity indicators (e.g. ranking and user ratings on app stores), which may not correspond with effectiveness, and rapid disengagement is common. Therefore, the...

Aim We aimed to investigate the feasibility and optimum design of a study to determine the clinical efficacy of symptomatic treatment of sarcoidosis-associated fatigue using methylphenidate. Methods Patients with pulmonary sarcoidosis and significant fatigue were recruited from the respiratory clinic at a single hospital, into a parallel-arm, doub...

Spatial lifecourse epidemiology is an interdisciplinary field that utilizes advanced spatial, location-based, and artificial intelligence technologies to investigate the long-term effects of environmental, behavioural, psychosocial, and biological factors on health-related states and events and the underlying mechanisms. With the growing number of...

Introduction: Family-based physical activity (PA) interventions present a promising avenue to promote children’s activity; however, high-quality experimental research is lacking. This paper describes the protocol for the FRESH (Families Reporting Every Step to Health) pilot trial, a child-led family-based PA intervention delivered online. Methods...

Background: Since 2008 primary care physicians (GPs) in our region have been allowed open access to knee MRI scans. There are questions about whether this changes referral practice and if it is an effective use of resources. Purpose: To describe the change in demographics of patients referred for knee MRI following implementation of a new referral...

Background It is widely recognised that drink driving is a leading cause of road traffic accidents (RTAs). There is evidence that changing the drink-drive limit from a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 to 0.05 g/dl is effective in reducing RTAs. Scotland changed the blood alcohol concentration limit to 0.05 g/dl on 5 December 2014. Aims To asses...

Aim To investigate the prevalence and correlates of depressive and anxiety symptoms within South Asian and white European populations at high risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Methods Data were collected at baseline, and at 12, 24 and 36 months from 1429 white European people (age 64±7 years, 35.8% women) and 160 South Asian people (age 59±9 yea...

Oral presentation at the Centre for Behaviour Change Digital Health Conference, 2019. London, UK.

Background Primary care access can be challenging for older, rural, socio-economically disadvantaged populations. Here we report the I-ACT cluster feasibility trial which aims to assess the feasibility of trial design and context-sensitive intervention to improve primary care access for this group and so expand existing theory. Methods Four genera...

Background Progress in mobile health (mHealth) technology has enabled the design of just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs). We define JITAIs as having three features: behavioural support that directly corresponds to a need in real-time; content or timing of support is adapted or tailored according to input collected by the system since suppor...

An outline of the ongoing systematic review looking at factors that influence uptake and engagement with digital interventions, defined here as health and wellbeing smartphone applications.

Background There is a need for high-quality research aiming to increase physical activity in families. This study assessed the feasibility and acceptability of FRESH (Families Reporting Every Step to Health), a child-led family-based physical activity intervention delivered online. Methods In a two-armed randomised feasibility study, 12 families (...