Background: The worldwide increase in the rates of childhood overweight and physical inactivity requires successful prevention and intervention programs for children. The aim of the Active Living project is to increase physical activity and decrease sedentary behavior of Dutch primary school children by developing and implementing tailored, multicomponent interventions at and around schools. Methods/design: In this project, school-centered interventions have been developed at 10 schools in the south of the Netherlands, using a combined top-down and bottom-up approach in which a research unit and a practice unit continuously interact. The interventions consist of a combination of physical and social interventions tailored to local needs of intervention schools. The process and short- and long-term effectiveness of the interventions will be evaluated using a quasi-experimental study design in which 10 intervention schools are matched with 10 control schools. Baseline and follow-up measurements (after 12 and 24 months) have been conducted in grades 6 and 7 and included accelerometry, GPS, and questionnaires. Primary outcome of the Active Living study is the change in physical activity levels, i.e. sedentary behavior (SB), light physical activity (LPA), moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and counts-per-minute (CPM). Multilevel regression analyses will be used to assess the effectiveness of isolated and combined physical and social interventions on children’s PA levels. Discussion: The current intervention study is unique in its combined approach of physical and social environmental PA interventions both at school(yard)s as well as in the local neighborhood around the schools. The strength of the study lies in the quasi-experimental design including objective measurement techniques, i.e. accelerometry and GPS, combined with more subjective techniques, i.e. questionnaires, implementation logbooks, and neighborhood observations. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanned/
Gezonde School-adviseurs (GSA) van de GGD ondersteunen scholen bij het implementeren van de Gezonde School-aanpak. Omdat iedere school uniek is, is een contextgerichte manier van ondersteunen noodzakelijk. Om GSA’s bewust te maken van en aan te moedigen om te werken met zo’n contextgerichte aanpak is een training ontwikkeld. Wij beschrijven hoe deze training door middel van cocreatie tot stand is gekomen en reflecteren op dit proces. Het ontwikkelproces bestond uit drie fasen: 1) inventarisatie van taken en behoeften van GSA, 2) ontwikkeling van de training, en 3) een pilottest van de training. Alle fasen hebben plaatsgevonden in cocreatie tussen onderzoekers, GSA’s uit de praktijk en het landelijke programmateam Gezonde School. Evaluatie van de twee gehouden pilots laat zien dat de ontwikkelde training goed wordt ontvangen (algemeen rapportcijfer: respectievelijk 7,4 en 8,4). Een reflectie op het ontwikkelingsproces laat zien hoe groot het belang is van cocreatie gedurende het gehele proces. Hierdoor kon continu rekening worden gehouden met de dagelijkse praktijk van de GSA’s en hun wensen en behoeften. Ook kon er zo voor gezorgd worden dat de training goed aansluit bij het huidige landelijke deskundigheidsbevorderingsaanbod voor GSA’s en de Gezonde School-aanpak in het algemeen.
From September 2024 onwards we will start the development of an educational innovation for Dutch primary schools to design a dynamic school day (a school day in which sedentary learning is regularly interrupted by moments of physical activity) for their local context. A number of Dutch primary schools already successfully implemented a more dynamic school day. In this qualitative study, we set out to assess the facilitators and barriers that several stakeholders faced during the implementation of the dynamic school day. We also set out to assess preferences of pupils with respect to a more dynamic school day. In preparation of the development phase, we will conduct semi-structured interviews with stakeholders of 3 Dutch primary schools (spring 2024). The interview guide will be based on the MRC guideline for conducting process evaluations of complex interventions. For each school, we seek to include: 1) the physical education teacher, 2) a classroom teacher who finds it easy to organize physical activities during the school day, 3) a classroom teacher who finds it difficult to organize physical activities during the school day, 4) a member of the management team. If relevant, we will also interview other stakeholders involved in the implementation of the dynamic school day. We will present the factors that may facilitate or hinder the implementation of a dynamic school day in the Dutch context. We will use these results to develop a set of potential implementation strategies that can serve as a source of inspiration for other Dutch primary schools in their process to develop a dynamic school day for their local context.
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