Report Card Leaders
Dimitrios Vlachopoulos, PH.D.
Dr Dimitrios Vlachopoulos, BSc, QTS, MSc, PhD, FHEA, FECSS Senior Lecturer in Paediatric Exercise and Health, University of Exeter Medical School Co-Director, Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre (CHERC) Academic Visitor, European Center of Obesity, Harokopio University of Athens, Greece
Greece Report Card Leader, Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance
Dr Dimitrios Vlachopoulos is a Senior Lecturer (tenure-track) in Paediatric Exercise and Health at the University of Exeter, UK, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK and Fellow of the European College of Sport Science. He is Co-Director of CHERC which is an internationally renowned research centre in youth physical activity and health. He holds an academic visiting position at Harokopio University’s European Center of Obesity and leads the national Active Healthy Kids network in Greece within the Global Matrix 5.0 initiative.
His interdisciplinary research focuses on children’s health, growth, and disease prevention through movement behaviours and lifestyle interventions. Dimitrios has led large-scale epidemiological, longitudinal, and intervention studies across the UK, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. His work has been published in >60 peer-reviewed papers and cited in guidelines by Public Health England and the Royal Osteoporosis Society.
He has received funding from Horizon 2020, Marie Curie, the EU Recovery Fund, and national scholarships, and earned multiple international awards (ECSS, BJSM, ROS, ICCBH). He was leading the physical activity behaviour intervention of the Horizon 2020 SEEDS project, empowering adolescents across Europe through participatory science to promote healthy lifestyles.
His global projects include research, impact and policy outputs with ALSPAC and UK Biobank (UK), PANIC (Finland), ABCD (Brazil), and iBoneFIT (Spain), Mid-Day Meal Scheme in India and a national obesity prevention programme in Greece supported by UNICEF and the Ministry of Health.
Christina Patmiou, BSc, MSc (cand.)
Christina Patmiou is a postgraduate researcher currently pursuing an MSc in Health Promotion and Education at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Dietetics from Harokopio University, where she is also involved as a Master’s-level researcher.
Her academic and professional interests lie in the fields of public health nutrition, health equity, and child and adolescent health promotion. Her current MSc thesis explores the impact of social determinants of health on behavioral and health outcomes among adolescents.
Christina has contributed to both national and international initiatives aimed at the primary prevention of childhood obesity, including her involvement in the National Action Plan for the Prevention of Childhood Obesity in Greece. She is also actively participating in major EU-funded projects such as DigiCare4You and JA PreventNCD, both of which promote healthy lifestyle behaviors among children and adolescents through school and community-based, equity-oriented strategies.
Alongside her research activities, Christina holds a certificate in pedagogical and teaching competence and serves as a member of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee of the Hellenic Dietetic Association.
Yannis Manios, M.Med.Sc., M.Phil, Ph.D
Prof. Yannis Manios is a Professor in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, as well as the Dean of the Health Science and Education School at Harokopio University, Athens; specialized in Nutritional Assessment, Counselling and Health Promotion. Since 2024, Prof. Manios also serves as the Director of the European Centre for Obesity (ECO), a strategic partner to UNICEF and the Ministry of Health in Greece, contributing to the National Programme Against Childhood Obesity. Prof. Manios currently also serves as a member of the National Committee of Public Health Experts and of the National Nutrition Committee of the Ministry of Health.
His postgraduate studies were in Human Nutrition (M.Med.Sc. & M.Phil) at Sheffield University, UK & his PhD in Preventive Medicine and Nutrition Clinic, Medical School at the University of Crete, primarily focused on children’s promotion of optimum nourishment, growth and development and the prevention of obesity and cardiometabolic risk factors.
Over the last 25 years his research interests have been expanded to include nutritional assessment of large national and multinational cohorts, as well as the development and implementation of community and digital health interventions and randomized clinical trials for the prevention or treatment of obesity, cardiometabolic risk factors and osteoporosis in all life stages.
Prof Manios has been/ is actively involved as a Principal Investigator or Coordinator in many National and European research programs either funded by the private sector, public sector or EU such as FP5: PHYTOHEALTH; FP6: HELENA; FP7: ENERGY, HabEat, Full4Health, Food4Me, ODIN; H2020: SWEET, GATEKEEPER, FNS Cloud; Horizon Europe: Plan’Eat, Better4U, ZERO HiddenHunger; EU4Health: JAPreventNCD. He has been the coordinator of the ToyBox-study (FP7) and the Feel4Diabetes-study (H2020), while currently he is the coordinator of the DigiCare4You-study (H2020) and MELIORA project (Horizon Europe). He is author/ coauthor in more than 650 scientific papers published in international scientific journals with more than 46.000 citations (h-index: 78). He has received 11 awards for his scientific work by national and international organizations.