Sarahjane Belton

Key Research Interests: Physical and Health literacy in adolescents; Rehabilitation programmes for chronic illness; Intervention development and evaluation

Sarahjane is an Associate Professor of Physical Education at the School of Health and Human Performance at DCU. Sarahjane researches in the field of childhood physical activity and health, encompassing all related aspects from physical activity and fitness, motivation and attitudes, to fundamental movement skill abilities. Much of her work centres on developing and evaluating physical literacy and health literacy intervention programmes, from pre-school level up to post primary. She lead on, and been involved in, the development, evaluation and dissemination of many national youth school based physical and health literacy interventions including Y-PATH (Youth-Physical Activity Towards Health), Moving Well Being Well, Kids Active, and LifeLab, has collaborated with many national agencies in this endeavour, and has published numerous text books and papers in this field. Sarahjane is also interested in the role of autonomic dysfunction in a range of chronic illnesses, and the development of rehabilitation intervention programmes targeting recovery from the perspective of autonomic function.