Dr. Tessa Strain

Biography

Tessa Strain is an epidemiologist with expertise in the measurement of physical activity through population surveys. She researches the associations between physical activity and health outcomes using device-based measures of activity. Tessa completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh from 2014 to 2017 before moving to the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. She was promoted to Senior Research Associate in 2022 and returned to the University of Edinburgh in 2023 while consulting for the World Health Organization. In 2024, she was awarded the Chancellor's Fellowship. Tessa has led several major projects resulting in publications in high-impact journals, including estimates of adult physical activity levels in 197 countries from 2000 to 2022 published in The Lancet Global Health and a prospective analysis of device-measured activity and mortality risk utilizing UK Biobank data in Nature Medicine. She also applied the Prevented Fraction Population method to quantify deaths averted due to current levels of physical activity published in The Lancet Global Health. Additionally, she conducted the largest nationally representative analysis of physical activity levels during the UK COVID-19 lockdown published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe. Tessa regularly contributes to policy discussions on the measurement of physical activity across the four UK home nations and co-chaired a Chief Medical Officer-appointed expert group on physical activity surveillance from 2019 to 2021, continuing efforts to implement the group's recommendations.

Research Interests

Experience