Designing and implementing teachers' training sessions in a kindergarten-based, family-involved intervention to prevent obesity in early childhood. The ToyBox-study.

Since school-based interventions are mainly delivered by the school staff, they need to be well-trained and familiarized with the programme's aims, procedures and tools. Therefore, the institute, research group, governmental or non-governmental body in charge of the coordination and implementation of the programme needs to devote time and resources to train the school staff before programme's implementation. This is particularly crucial in multi-centre studies where more than one research teams are involved.

Concepts and strategies on how to train and motivate teachers to implement a kindergarten-based, family-involved intervention to prevent obesity in early childhood. The ToyBox-study.

The key person for the implementation of kindergarten-based behavioural interventions is the kindergarten teacher. When conducting intervention studies in kindergartens, training sessions are needed to train and motivate kindergarten teachers for programme implementation. This paper presents the systematic development of the teachers' trainings executed in the ToyBox-intervention - a kindergarten-based and family-involved obesity prevention programme for children aged 4-6.

Developing the intervention material to increase physical activity levels of European preschool children: the ToyBox-study.

Early childhood is an important period for adopting positive health-related behaviours. More than 95% of European preschool children attend kindergartens, making these settings ideal for the implementation of health promotion interventions. The ToyBox-intervention addressed preschool children, their parents/caregivers and teachers.

Using the intervention mapping protocol to reduce European preschoolers' sedentary behavior, an application to the ToyBox-Study.

Background: High levels of sedentary behavior are often measured in preschoolers, but only a few interventions have been developed to counteract this. Furthermore, detailed descriptions of interventions in preschoolers targeting different forms of sedentary behavior could not be located in the literature. The aim of the present paper was to describe the different steps of the Intervention Mapping Protocol used towards the development of an intervention component of the ToyBox-study focusing on decreasing preschoolers' sedentary behavior.

Evidence-based recommendations for the development of obesity prevention programs targeted at preschool children.

The ToyBox intervention was developed using an evidence-based approach, using the findings of four reviews. These reviews included three critical and narrative reviews of educational strategies and psychological approaches explaining young children's acquisition and formation of energy-balance related behaviours, and the management of these behaviours, and also a systematic review of behavioural models underpinning school-based interventions in preschool and school settings for the prevention of obesity in children aged 4-6 years. This paper summarises and translates the findings from these reviews into practical evidence based recommendations for researchers and policy-makers to consider when developing and implementing interventions for the prevention of overweight and obesity in young (aged 4-6 years) children.