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.

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.

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.

Rapid Review on the Concept of Positive Health and Its Implementation in Practice.

Positive health (PH) has been described as a promising transformative innovation to address the challenges of promoting well-being and reducing the burden of disease. For this study, we conducted a scientific literature review of the current state of knowledge about PH as introduced by Huber and colleagues, following the Cochrane Rapid Review recommendations. Three databases were searched (PubMed, Google Scholar, and CINAHL).

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.

Assessing the long-term health impact of COVID-19: The importance of using self-reported health measures.

It is estimated that at least one out of 10 people who contracted COVID-19 continue to experience health problems long after the clearance of the acute infection. These belong to the growing group of people who have post-acute sequelae of SARS CoV-2 infection or long COVID, a multifaceted condition involving multiple organ systems. Given the lack of clear definition and diagnosis, this marked increase in the number of people who have long COVID might not be fully reflected in data on population health in the years to come.

Intergenerational educational trajectories and inequalities in longevity: A population-based study of adults born before 1965 in 14 European countries.

Background: While educational gradients in longevity have been observed consistently in adult Europeans, these inequalities have been understudied within the context of family- and country-level influences. We utilized population-based multi-generational multi-country data to assess the role (1) of parental and individual education in shaping intergenerational inequalities in longevity, and (2) of country-level social net expenditure in mitigating these inequalities.

Methods: We analyzed data from 52,271 adults born before 1965 who participated in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, comprising 14 countries.

Intersectional migration-related health inequalities in Europe: Exploring the role of migrant generation, occupational status & gender.

Integrating intersectionality theory and employing a quantitative design, the current study explores how migration-related health inequalities in Europe interact with migrant generation, occupational status and gender. Multilevel logistic regression analyses are conducted using pooled data from six waves of the European Social Survey (2004-2014), from 27 countries for two subjective health measures (general self-reported health and hampering conditions). The results reveal multiple relationships of health inequality that operate simultaneously and the complexity through which the combination of social privilege and disadvantage can have a particularly negative impact on individual health.

Educational inequalities in mortality amenable to healthcare. A comparison of European healthcare systems.

Background: Educational inequalities in health and mortality in European countries have often been studied in the context of welfare regimes or political systems. We argue that the healthcare system is the national level feature most directly linkable to mortality amenable to healthcare. In this article, we ask to what extent the strength of educational differences in mortality amenable to healthcare vary among European countries and between European healthcare system types.

The European epidemic: Pain prevalence and socioeconomic inequalities in pain across 19 European countries.

Background: Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2014, this study presents an update of pain prevalence amongst men and women across Europe and undertakes the first analysis of socioeconomic inequalities in pain.

Methods: Data from the ESS 2014 survey were analysed for three pain variables: back/neck pain (n = 11,032), hand/arm pain (n = 5,954) and foot/leg pain (n = 6,314). Education was used as the indicator of socioeconomic status (SES).

Country-Level Gender Equality and Adolescents' Contraceptive Use in Europe, Canada and Israel: Findings from 33 Countries.

Context: Although an association between gender equality and contraceptive use has been confirmed among adult samples, few studies have explored this relationship among adolescents. An examination of whether adolescents' contraceptive use is more prevalent in countries with higher levels of gender equality is needed to fill this gap.

Methods: Nationally representative data from 33 countries that participated in the 2013-2014 Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children study and country-level measures of gender equality-using the 2014 Global Gender Gap Index-were analyzed.

Social integration and self-reported health: differences between immigrants and natives in Greece.

Background: Our paper assesses the relationship between social integration, in terms of social contact and social trust, and one's individual health. While a large body of research already engaged with clarifying this relationship, we know little about the role one's immigration background plays in moderating this relationship. With respect to this, we explicitly focus on how one's immigrant status moderates the relationship between social integration and self-reported health.

Non-communicable diseases in Greece: inequality, gender and migration.

The relationship between gender, migration status and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is rarely examined. In this study, we rely on data from the MIGHEAL Survey on health inequalities in Greece collected in 2016 comprising 1332 respondents of which 59.98% identified themselves as Greek-born, 24.

Depressive symptoms among migrants and non-migrants in Europe: documenting and explaining inequalities in times of socio-economic instability.

Background: With the current study, we aim to explore the extent that migrants report higher rates of depressive symptoms than non-migrant populations in light of gender, childhood experiences, socioeconomic factors and social support across European countries that have been differentially influenced by the economic crisis.

Methods: Using data from the seventh round of the European Social Survey and the Greek MIGHEAL survey, we compare the prevalence of depressive symptoms among migrants and non-migrants aged 25-65 years old across 21 countries.

Results: Our findings show that migrants report significantly higher levels of depressive symptoms in seven of the examined countries, while in Greece and in the UK, they report significantly lower levels compared with non-migrant populations.

The effects of public health policies on health inequalities in high-income countries: an umbrella review.

Background: Socio-economic inequalities are associated with unequal exposure to social, economic and environmental risk factors, which in turn contribute to health inequalities. Understanding the impact of specific public health policy interventions will help to establish causality in terms of the effects on health inequalities.

Methods: Systematic review methodology was used to identify systematic reviews from high-income countries that describe the health equity effects of upstream public health interventions.

Understanding the micro and macro politics of health: Inequalities, intersectionality & institutions - A research agenda.

This essay brings together intersectionality and institutional approaches to health inequalities, suggesting an integrative analytical framework that accounts for the complexity of the intertwined influence of both individual social positioning and institutional stratification on health. This essay therefore advances the emerging scholarship on the relevance of intersectionality to health inequalities research. We argue that intersectionality provides a strong analytical tool for an integrated understanding of health inequalities beyond the purely socioeconomic by addressing the multiple layers of privilege and disadvantage, including race, migration and ethnicity, gender and sexuality.

Alcohol consumption among first- and second-generation immigrant and native adolescents in 23 countries: Testing the importance of origin and receiving country alcohol prevalence rates.

Introduction And Aims: This internationally comparative study examines differences in alcohol consumption between first- and second-generation immigrant and native adolescents. We also investigate to what extent origin and receiving country alcohol per capita consumption (APCC) rates and proportions of heavy episodic drinkers (HED) are associated with immigrant adolescents' alcohol consumption.

Design And Methods: We used cross-sectional survey data from the 2013/2014 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study.

The health of European populations: introduction to the special supplement on the 2014 European Social Survey (ESS) rotating module on the social determinants of health.

This introduction summarizes the main findings of the Supplement 'Social inequalities in health and their determinants' to the European Journal of Public Health. The 16 articles that constitute this supplement use the new ESS (2014) health module data to analyze the distribution of health across European populations. Three main themes run across these articles: documentation of cross-national variation in the magnitude and patterning of health inequalities; assessment of health determinants variation across populations and in their contribution to health inequalities; and the examination of the effects of health outcomes across social groups.

Prevalence of physical and mental non-communicable diseases in Europe: findings from the European Social Survey (2014) special module on the social determinants of health.

Previous studies examining physical and mental non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Europe have so far largely either focused on limited numbers of countries or on fairly limited ranges of NCDs, with mental health in particular often being ignored. This article has three aims: (i) To provide a recent, comprehensive overview of a broad range of NCDs across a range of countries in all European regions; (ii) To give an overview of measures of physical and mental health in the new special rotating module in the European Social Survey (ESS); and (iii) To offer the first comprehensive comparison of estimates on physical and mental NCDs across European countries in this new promising data source. We use data from the 7th wave of the ESS.

The social and behavioural determinants of health in Europe: findings from the European Social Survey (2014) special module on the social determinants of health.

Background: Previous studies comparing the social and behavioural determinants of health in Europe have largely focused on individual countries or combined data from various national surveys. In this article, we present the findings from the new rotating module on social determinants of health in the European Social Survey (ESS) (2014) to obtain the first comprehensive comparison of estimates on the prevalence of the following social and behavioural determinants of health: working conditions, access to healthcare, housing quality, unpaid care, childhood conditions and health behaviours.

Methods: We used the 7th round of the ESS.

Depressed during the depression: has the economic crisis affected mental health inequalities in Europe? Findings from the European Social Survey (2014) special module on the determinants of health.

Background: Economic crises constitute a shock to societies with potentially harmful effects to the mental health status of the population, including depressive symptoms, and existing health inequalities.

Methods: With recent data from the European Social Survey (2006–14), this study investigates how the economic recession in Europe starting in 2007 has affected health inequalities in 21 European nations. Depressive feelings were measured with the CES-D eight-item depression scale.

Educational inequalities in risky health behaviours in 21 European countries: findings from the European social survey (2014) special module on the social determinants of health.

Background: It has been suggested that cross-national variation in educational inequalities in health outcomes (e.g. NCDs) is due to cross-national variation in risky health behaviour.

Non-communicable diseases and the social determinants of health in the Nordic countries: Findings from the European Social Survey (2014) special module on the social determinants of health.

Comparative studies examining non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and determinants of health in the Nordic countries are scarce, outdated and focus only on a limited range of NCDs and health determinants. This study is the first to present a comprehensive overview of the distribution of social and behavioural determinants of health and of physical and mental NCDs in the Nordic population. We examined regional, country and gender differences for 17 health outcomes and 20 determinants of health.