A Keele University professor has been selected to sit on a new World Heart Federation (WHF) advisory board, joining a global effort to combat heart disease.

Professor John Buckley’s involvement with the WHF goes back more than a decade and he said it was a 'huge honour and privilege' to be asked to serve on the Physical Activity Nutrition and Obesity Expert Group.

The WHF champions heart health and acts to reduce the global burden of heart disease and stroke, which together claim 20.5 million lives every year.

Professor Buckley, a Professor of Exercise Rehabilitation, will be working to advocate, educate and evaluate important health improvement goals and initiatives on an international scale.

He said: "Having served on a recent World Health Organization (WHO) panel for developing global standards in the delivery of cardiac rehabilitation, I would have never expected to have the same level of opportunity again to work on lifestyle health issues on an international scale.

"When it comes to a focus of what needs to be achieved, I'd very much like to see WHF become an even more heard voice for advocating the age-old problems of creating a social and built environment that naturally increases people’s levels of physical activity.

"We have 70 years of science, evidence and public health prescriptions on physical activity, but these have not yet truly shifted the dial on changing behaviour, despite wide public knowledge of the benefits."

Professor Buckley, a former President of the British Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, has 35 years of experiences as both a frontline physical activity/exercise for health specialist, and as a clinical and public health educator/researcher. 

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