The SBRN Practice Leadership Award is an annual award designed to recognize and celebrate an individual, group or organization who has demonstrated exceptional and sustained leadership in raising awareness and offering solutions to reduce and manage excessive sedentary behaviour.

Dr Bai Li, Associate Professor in the Centre for Exercise, Health and Nutrition based at the School for Policy Studies, was nominated for the ENERGISE project which the awarding body noted “has had a groundbreaking impact on sedentary behaviour research, practice and policy”.

As the Principal Investigator for ENERGISE, Dr Li used representative surveillance data from 100,000 Chinese children and adolescents to evaluate the impact of the world’s first nation-wide regulation aimed at improving the sedentary behaviour among pupils in digital, home and school environments. The project, which used natural experiment evaluation design, found that pupils had reduced their total sedentary behaviour time by approximately 50 minutes per day and were 20% more likely to meet international daily screen time recommendations.

The ENERGISE project provides much needed and timely evidence to support regulatory interventions that target multiple settings and types of sedentary behaviour among children and adolescents. Dr Li has been invited to present the important findings to national governments and inter-governmental organisations. The WHO Regional Office in Europe is also supporting Dr Li’s initiative to set up a new international research consortium. This will explore the political feasibility and public acceptability to implement regulatory interventions, reducing sedentary behaviour among children in European countries.

Of the award, Dr Bai Li said, "I feel very honoured to receive this prestigious international award and will continue to work with partners and stakeholders internationally to advocate policy and environmental actions to tackle the global challenge of increasing sedentary behaviour".