DUTCH RESEARCH COLLABORATION

1. DUTCH RESEARCH COLLABORATION ON THE COMPREHENSIVE INTEGRATED COMMUNITY APPROACH TO PREVENT OVERWEIGHT IN CHILDREN Van Koperen TM1, Hendriks AM2, Van de Gaar V3, Ruiter E4, Van der Kleij MJJ5 1 VU University, Health Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2 Maastricht University, Health Sciences, Maastricht, The Netherlands 3 Erasmus MC, Public Health, Rotterdam, The Netherlands 4 GGD Nijmegen, Health Promotion and Epidemiology, Nijmegen, The Netherlands 5 Leiden University Medical Centre, Public Health, Leiden, The Netherlands Correspondence to: Marije van Koperen, marije.van.koperen@vu.nl tel #31-20-5983718 • INTRODUCTION • Determinants of overweight can be found at individual and environmental level. Therefore, preventive strategies should be directed at both the individual and the environmental level through a comprehensive integrated community approach. In 2010, five major local collaborations consisting of academic institutions, community health services and local authorities (Academic Collaborative Centres (ACC) for Public Health) conducted exploratory research to identify gaps in knowledge & expertise on this approach. Identified gaps and future study topics were: • Emergence & development of political support, • Use of social marketing techniques, • Parental involvement in interventions, • Success of intended adoption and implementation processes, • Methodology for evaluation. • CONCLUSIONS • Future activities of CIAO will focus on • Gaining insight in & creating methods for the five study topics • Identifying possibilities of collaboration between the domains of policy, practice and research. • These findings will hopefully add to the quality and implementation of the comprehensive community approach preventing overweight in children. METHODS The five ACC, now combined in the Consortium Integrated Approach Overweight (CIAO), share knowledge & expertise and study multiple comprehensive community approaches preventing overweight in children. To develop theoretical frameworks, literature was studied on best practises regarding the five study topics. Moreover, interviews are being held with program leaders, political representatives, policy makers, users and target audiences. The theoretical frameworks and models will be tested and evaluated in multiple communities in The Netherlands. • RESULTS • The initial findings of CIAO (will) comprise: • A determined, overarching logic model for the integrated approach of overweight in children, • A theoretical framework for the emergence and development of political support & intersectoral collaboration, • A framework for program evaluation, • An evaluation tool for social marketing techniques.