Professor Anthony Okely is a Senior Professor in the School of Health and Society at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is an NHMRC Leadership Fellow (Level 2), and Theme Leader at the Illawarra Health & Medical Research Institute.
His research focuses on movement behaviors (physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep) in children, with a particular focus on low- and middle-income countries.
Anthony led the team that developed the Australian 24-hour Movement Guidelines for Children birth to 5 years. He was part of the Guideline Development Group for the WHO Global guidelines on physical activity, sedentary and sleep behaviors in children under 5 years of age, and for similar guidelines in South Africa, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
He currently leads an international study of movement behaviors in the early years called SUNRISE, which involves 41 countries, 25 of which are low- or middle-income.
He has published over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles that have been cited over 24,000 times. He has an h-index of 79. He was a Clarivate Highly-Cited Researcher in 2019 and 2021.