Emily Eglitis

Emily is a researcher at the Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (ARENA) at Adelaide University. Her research focuses on the academic, health, and mental wellbeing declines children can experience during the long school holiday period, with evidence showing these declines are often greater for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Emily’s work also explores the role that summer programming could play, as a way to address these unequal health outcomes and to support children’s physical health, mental wellbeing, and overall development. She is particularly interested in identifying practical, scalable, real-world solutions to ensure all children have the opportunity to thrive during the summer break. Emily graduated with a Bachelor of Physiotherapy at the University of South Australia in 2006. After almost two decades in private practice, she Emily gained her doctorate in Public Health from Adelaide University in 2026. She is a researcher and teaches in the Physiotherapy program, along with applied ethics and design thinking courses.