IHPE Masterclass Series 2025

Brought to you by the Institute of Health Promotion & Education (IHPE) in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, UK.

Join us for a series of 5 Masterclasses in 2025, providing continuing professional development in key topic areas outlined in the IHPE Manifesto.

The series is hosted by Professor Holly Blake, Trustee of IHPE, health psychologist, and professor of behavioural medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham,UK.

Our sessions focus on advocating for positive health, preventing ill health, and reducing inequalities. This year, our topics include physical activity engagement, mental health promotion, obesity prevention, brief interventions for health promotion relating to alcohol misuse, and breast cancer prevention, treatment and care. We focus on ways in which we can promote health to people of all ages, through community initiatives, or by promoting health through ‘healthy settings’ such as workplaces and hospitals.

MASTERCLASS 1: Parkrun: the world’s largest public health promotion in physical activity

Speaker: Professor Steve Haake, Professor of Sports Engineering / Director of Engagement, Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.

In this masterclass session, Steve will talk about parkrun and its impact on those who take part using surveys from the UK, Ireland and Australia of more than 170,000 parkrun participants.

Questions that will be asked in the session (and hopefully answered):

Who are parkrunners?
What motivates them to take part?
What is the impact of taking part?
What lessons do we learn from parkrun for other initiatives?

The session will conclude with attendee comments and questions.

Speaker Biography:

Professor Steve Haake is Professor of Sports Engineering / Director of Engagement, Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Steve is a physicist by training but has working in engineering, sport, and public health. He has been Chair of the Parkrun Research Board since 2015 (although this is currently in abeyance). He published his first popular science book in 2018 (“Advantage Play: Technologies that changed Sporting History”) and has published six edited books of conference proceedings, authored around 240 journal, conference and other articles for magazines such as New Scientist and Physics World.

He gives regular popular talks and has appeared frequently on television and radio. In 2021, he appeared on Radio 4’s The Life Scientific, hosted by Jim al-Khalili. In 2014, Research Councils UK identified him as one of the 10 most inspirational scientists in the UK.