Dr Declan Ryan

Declan Ryan is an Associate Professor in Physical Activity and Health. His area of research focusses on public health approaches to physical activity promotion.

Get Research Support:

Declan and his team offer research support to external organisations who are using physical activity to improve health. They can support with:

1. Evaluation of funded programmes, interventions, or strategies
2. Developing evaluation frameworks
3. Providing evidence reviews

If your organisation would benefit from research support from Declan's team, then please contact him by email.

Case Studies - Declan's current research portfolio is broken down into four areas:

Greenspaces: Declan has explored approaches to promote physical activity within public parks, such as green social prescribing and wayfinding interventions. His team offers evaluations of greenspace interventions and community programmes. For example, Declan and colleagues evaluated Delapré Abbey's Wellbeing Hub programme, which was funded by Arts Council England and the National Academy of Social Prescribing's Thriving Communities programme. Furthermore, his team has carried out observations of park footfall and intercept surveys as part of natural experimental studies to determine the effectiveness of Department for Transport funded upgrades to park footpaths.

Declan is the co-founder of the Active Quarter, a collective of land managers and owners aiming to enhance the use of local greenspaces as a Public Health asset. Declan and his team provide evidence and insight to the partnership to facilitate their decision-making. The partnership received recognition and support from West Northamptonshire Council, who resolved the Active Quarter Cabinet Paper in January 2023. 

Holiday Activities and Food Programme: Since 2021, Declan and his team have evaluated the summer six-week implementation of the Government funded Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme within Northamptonshire. From October 2024, Declan and his PhD candidate, Alex Turtle, have focussed on the implementation of Nutritional Education within the HAF Northants programme. They'll be working with the funder, Northamptonshire Sport, Holiday Club Providers, Parents, and Children to develop solutions to improve the quality and consistency of nutritional education delivery across HAF Northants. 

Whole System Approaches to Physical Activity Inequalities: Declan provides monitoring and evaluation support to Northamptonshire Sport, West Northamptonshire Council, and North Northamptonshire Council for their Sport England funded Place Expansion Programme. Through the Sport England funding, both Councils aim to implement their new physical activity strategies. which focus on working closely with residents and other organisations in partnership to make neighbourhoods better for physical activity. Declan has supported the project by leading Theory of Change workshops, creating evaluation frameworks, evaluating services, and helping the Councils monitor the impact of their new strategies. You can see summaries of his work on the Move Northamptonshire website.

Public Health Partnerships: Declan has worked with several health and care organisations to deliver partnership workshops for county-wide strategy development and evaluation. Notably, Declan worked with Integrated Care Northamptonshire to co-develop a logic model of the change to achieve the aims of their new Research and Innovation Strategy. The workshop was attended by 50 partners from the health and care sector in Northamptonshire who shared their voice on what outputs, activities, and resources were needed to meet the aims of the new strategy. Furthermore, Declan has held partnership events with West and North Northamptonshire Public Health to facilitate collaborative working between officers and academics, as well as evaluation framework workshops with Cambridgeshire and Peterborough OPCC and Northamptonshire Serious Violence Prevention Partnership for their new Serious Violence Duty Strategies. 

Secondment to the Institute of Public Safety, Crime and Justice: Between February 2024 and March 2025, Declan provided a public health approach to evaluations within the IPSCJ team at the University of Northampton. Their work mainly supports police and crime commissioners and local authorities to evaluate their crime prevention interventions, with a focus on the Serious Violence Duty.

Representation on Groups and Boards

• Advisor - HAF-DEFINE Advisory Group. National evaluation of the Holiday Activities and Food Programme, led by the University of Bristol and funded by NIHR.
• Member - Northamptonshire Physical Activity Network.
• Member - Integrated Care Northamptonshire Research Operational Committee.
• Independent Chair – West Northamptonshire Council’s Parks Development Strategy Group.

PhD and DProf Supervision:

• Alix Clarke - Isometric Exercise to regulate blood pressure in a Health Checks service.
• Alex Turtle - Implementing nutritional education into HAF Northants.
• Ben Wright - Efficacy of Isometric Exercise to regulate blood pressure.
• Matt Stringfellow - Paramedic clinical leadership: what it is and what does the profession need to be better?
• Brett Baxter (completed) – Use of eccentric exercise as a fall prevention intervention.