After the two days of ice on the Dutch canals that provided proof that environmental factors do predict specific physical acivities, and the Christmas days, I took a few days off. We travelled to Norway where a very good friend and colleague let us stay in his mountain hut in the Hogfjell mountains near Honefoss. The days in Norway at this time of year are very short. It gets light at about 9.00 am and dark at about 3.30 pm. The hours inbetween we used for cross country skiing, the afternoons I was able to write a paper based on a presentation I gave at the fifth Heelsum conference early December 2007. The Heelsum conferences are bi-annual invitation meetings focussed on the possibilities of healthful nutrition promotion in primary care. Professor Gerrit Hiddink from Wageningen University is the main initiator of thse conferences. This time one of the aims was to explore how nutrition education by the general practitionar fits within the broader physical and social environmental determinants of health eating.
I also wrote a draft edotorial for a special issue I am guest editing together with Prof. Arja Aro from Denmark on risk perceptions and risk communication related to emerging infectious diseases. To control new infectious diseases the identification of the organisms, the infectivity, development of vaccines and therapies, contact tracing, isolation, and screening may all be important. Many of these issues are partly dependent on human behaviours. For example, the success of prevention of infectivity (e.g. engaging in precautionary behaviours such as wearing masks, hand hygiene, isolation etc.), vaccination, contact tracing and population screening are all more or less dependent on whether people at risk comply with behavioural recommendations. Especially in the early phases of a possible epidemic, compliance to precautionary behaviours among the populations at risk is often the only means of prevention of a further spread of the disease. However, very little research has been conducted to explore the determinants of behavioural responses to infectious disease outbreaks, and risk perceptions and communications are regarded as important factors for behavioral responses. The International Journal of Beavioral Medicine now prepares this special issue on this important topic.
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