Experiences of policy-advisors in capacity, opportunity and motivation for implementing local tobacco control.

Introduction: Due to decades of decentralisation of public health policies, local governments have been given increased tobacco control responsibilities across European countries. Previous studies suggest that implementing local tobacco control policies is not without challenges (e.g.

Formulating tobacco control policies: How can local governments contribute?

Introduction: Due to a continuing international trend of decentralization of public health policies, local governments are given an increasingly important role in tobacco control. The process of developing local-level tobacco control policies is an underexplored topic. This study uses grant applications as a data source to gain insight into the planning, development and proposed implementation of local tobacco control policies by regional public health departments in the Netherlands.

School Health Promotion, the Body Mass Index z-Score, and Psychosocial Health in Primary Schools of the Netherlands.

Childhood overweight and psychosocial issues remain significant public health concerns. Schools worldwide implement health promotion programs to address these issues and to support the physical and psychosocial health of children. However, more insight is needed into the relation between these health-promoting programs and the Body Mass Index (BMI) z-score and psychosocial health of children, while taking into account how school factors might influence this relation.

Physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and childhood asthma: a European collaborative analysis.

Objectives: To investigate the associations of physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour in early childhood with asthma and reduced lung function in later childhood within a large collaborative study.

Design: Pooling of longitudinal data from collaborating birth cohorts using meta-analysis of separate cohort-specific estimates and analysis of individual participant data of all cohorts combined.

Setting: Children aged 0-18 years from 26 European birth cohorts.

The Role of School Health Promotion in Students' Dietary Intake during School Hours: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis.

Many children in the Netherlands do not adhere to dietary guidelines. Therefore, the Healthy School (HS) program stimulates healthier dietary intake of students through schools. However, evaluating the effectiveness of school health promotion in improving dietary intake is challenging due to the influence of contextual factors.

Does School Health Promotion Have Additional Value for Educational Performance? A Repeated Cross-Sectional Multilevel Study.

Little information is available regarding the influence of the interplay between the school context and school health promotion on educational performance. Therefore, we examined whether the variation between primary and secondary schools regarding the educational performance of students could be explained by general school characteristics, school population characteristics, and school health promotion and to what extent these factors interact. We performed multilevel analyses using existing data on 7021 primary schools and 1315 secondary schools in the Netherlands from the school years 2010-2011 till 2018-2019.

Quantifying reciprocal relationships between poverty and health: combining a causal loop diagram with longitudinal structural equation modelling.

Background: This study takes on the challenge of quantifying a complex causal loop diagram describing how poverty and health affect each other, and does so using longitudinal data from The Netherlands. Furthermore, this paper elaborates on its methodological approach in order to facilitate replication and methodological advancement.

Methods: After adapting a causal loop diagram that was built by stakeholders, a longitudinal structural equation modelling approach was used.

School health promotion and fruit and vegetable consumption in secondary schools: a repeated cross-sectional multilevel study.

Background: Worldwide, recommendations for fruit and vegetable consumption are not met, which can cause chronic diseases. Especially adolescence is an important phase for the development of health behaviours. Therefore, in the Netherlands, the Healthy School program was established to aid schools in promoting healthy lifestyles among their students.

Fidelity, adaptation and integration of whole-school health promotion within Dutch schools: a cross-sectional survey study.

Implementing comprehensive health promotion programs in the school setting can be challenging, as schools can be considered complex adaptive systems. As a first step towards understanding what works in improving implementation for which schools and under which conditions, this study aimed to examine the degree of implementation of health promoting school (HPS) programs, in terms of five dimensions of fidelity (adherence, dose, participant responsiveness, quality of delivery and program differentiation), and the dimensions of adaptation and integration. The HPS Implementation Questionnaire was distributed among ± 2400 primary, secondary, secondary vocational and special needs schools in the Netherlands.

Childhood infection burden, recent antibiotic exposure and vascular phenotypes in preschool children.

Background: Severe childhood infection has a dose-dependent association with adult cardiovascular events and with adverse cardiometabolic phenotypes. The relationship between cardiovascular outcomes and less severe childhood infections is unclear.

Aim: To investigate the relationship between common, non-hospitalised infections, antibiotic exposure, and preclinical vascular phenotypes in young children.

Two sides of the same coin? Absolute income and perceived income inadequacy as social determinants of health.

Background: Absolute income is commonly used in studies of health inequalities, however it does not reflect spending patterns, debts, or expectations. These aspects are reflected in measures concerning perceived income inadequacy. While health inequities by absolute income or perceived income inadequacy are well established, few studies have explored the interplay of absolute income and perceived income inadequacy in relation to health.

School health promotion and the consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages in secondary schools: a cross-sectional multilevel study.

Background: Overweight among adolescents remains a serious concern worldwide and can have major health consequences in later life, such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Still, 33% of secondary school adolescents in the Netherlands consume sugar-sweetened beverages daily and over 26% do not consume water every day. The Dutch Healthy School program was developed to support schools in stimulating healthier lifestyles by focusing on health education, school environments, identifying students' health problems, and school policy.

Measuring Implementation of Health Promoting School (HPS) Programs: Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the HPS Implementation Questionnaire.

Background: Implementation of Health Promoting School (HPS) programs can be challenging due to the dynamic school context. Navigating between program fidelity and adaptation, as well as integrating the program, is essential for successful implementation, and consequently, for program effects. As part of an evaluation study in the Netherlands, this study aimed to develop a measurement instrument that differentiates schools according to fidelity, adaptation, and integration of HPS implementation.

Regional differences in healthcare costs further explained: The contribution of health, lifestyle, loneliness and mastery.

Unlabelled: Healthcare costs in the Netherlands are rising and vary considerably among regions. Explaining regional differences in healthcare costs can help policymakers in targeting appropriate interventions in order to restrain costs. Factors usually taken into account when analyzing regional differences in healthcare costs are demographic structure and socioeconomic status (SES).

Clustering of trauma patients based on longitudinal data and the application of machine learning to predict recovery.

Predicting recovery after trauma is important to provide patients a perspective on their estimated future health, to engage in shared decision making and target interventions to relevant patient groups. In the present study, several unsupervised techniques are employed to cluster patients based on longitudinal recovery profiles. Subsequently, these data-driven clusters were assessed on clinical validity by experts and used as targets in supervised machine learning models.

Qualitative modelling of social determinants of health using group model building: the case of debt, poverty, and health.

Background: Social determinants of health (SDoH) are known to have a large impact on health outcomes, but their effects are difficult to make visible. They are part of complex systems of variables largely indirect effects on multiple levels, constituting so-called wicked problems. This study describes a participatory approach using group model building (GMB) with stakeholders, in order to develop a qualitative causal model of the health effects of SDoH, taking poverty and debt in the Dutch city of Utrecht as a case study.

As Steady as a Rock! Gaining Insight in Recruitment and Retention Among Primary School Children With Behavioural Problems in Sport Mix Club.

The number of children dealing with behavioural problems is increasing. A major challenge in many health-supportive programmes is the recruitment and retention of these children. In the current study, Sport Mix Club (SMC), an approach to enhance socioemotional disorders of 4- to 12-year-old children through sport classes in municipality Vaals, the Netherlands, is used as an illustration.

Longitudinal Associations of Substance Use Risk Profiles with the Use of Alternative Tobacco Products and Conventional Smoking among Adolescents.

Although personality is associated with the onset of substance use (i.e., conventional smoking, alcohol use, and cannabis use) during adolescence, it is unclear whether personality traits are also associated with the onset of use of alternative tobacco products (ATPs), i.

Is Loneliness an Undervalued Pathway between Socio-Economic Disadvantage and Health?

Loneliness is a growing public health issue. It is more common in disadvantaged groups and has been associated with a range of poor health outcomes. Loneliness may also form an independent pathway between socio-economic disadvantage and poor health.

Tunneling a crosstown highway: a natural experiment testing the longitudinal effect on physical activity and active transport.

Background: In the city of Maastricht in the Netherlands, a highway crossing several deprived neighborhoods was tunneled in 2016. The vacant space on top of this tunnel was redesigned and prioritized for pedestrians and cyclists. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of this major infrastructural change, named the Green Carpet, on total and transport-based physical activity (PA) levels.

Does Loneliness Have a Cost? A Population-Wide Study of the Association Between Loneliness and Healthcare Expenditure.

Loneliness has been associated with unhealthy behavior, poorer health, and increased morbidity. However, the costs of loneliness are poorly understood. Multiple sources were combined into a dataset containing a nationally representative sample ( = 341,376) of Dutch adults (18+).

[Effects and costs of The Healthy Primary School of the Future].

Objective: To study school lifestyle interventions for elementary school children (The Healthy Primary School of the Future).

Research Question: What are the effects of the introduction of increased physical activity with or without healthy nutrition on health behaviour and BMI of young children and what are the costs of this program?

Design: Prospective controlled non-randomized study with nearly 1700 children in Parkstad (South-East Netherlands).

Results: Preliminary results after two years show that the combination of increased physical activity and healthy nutrition result in a decreased BMIz-score (-0.

Do parenting practices moderate the association between the physical neighbourhood environment and changes in children's time spent at various physical activity levels? An exploratory longitudinal study.

Background: As many children do not meet the recommended daily physical activity (PA) levels, more research is needed towards environmental determinants of children's PA levels. The aims of this longitudinal study were to investigate whether the physical environment and parenting practices have an impact on changes in children's weekday time spent at various PA levels and whether associations between physical neighbourhood environment and changes in children's PA are moderated by parenting practices.

Methods: We performed a secondary data analysis of longitudinal data collected at three timepoints (baseline, 6, and 18 months) from 10 control schools of the Active Living study, a quasi-experimental study, which took place in South Limburg, the Netherlands.