A seminar by colleagues from the Center for Physical Activity and Nutrtion Research (C-Pan), Deakin University

On Friday May 21 Prof. Jo Salmon and Dr. Lukar Thornton give a seminar at the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research. Prof. Salmon will spend her sabbatical at the institute, and Dr. Thornton was over for just a few days. EMGO+ has a successful ongoing collaboration with C-PAN. We collaborate on different The director of C-PAN, Prof. David Crawford is a visiting professor at EMGO+.
Prof. Salmon’s presentation is on ‘Standing up for children's health: reducing children's sedentary time at school and home’, while Lukar Thornton will speak about ‘Current approaches to measurements of food environments and some approaches for the future’.

A course on mediation analysis within the ENERGY project

In behaviour nutrition and physical activity research the focus is more and more on indentifying the interplay between different behavioral determinants, i.e. on indentifying the causal pathways from more distal to more proximal determinants to health behaviors and health outcomes. In health behaviour change intervention research, the focus is more and more on why, i.e. through what causal pathways interventions work or not.

To answer such research questions, mediation analysis is key. Within the “EuropeaN Energy balance Research to prevent excessive weight Gain among Youth” (ENERGY)-project, such analyses are a main focus to indeed identify the mediating pathways of determinants of energy balance-related eating and physical activity behaviors, and the mediating path ways through which energy-balance interventions have their effects. Today, Drs. Maartje van Stralen and Saskia te Velde and Mine Yildrim, MSc led a workshop to introduce the ENERGY researchers in mediation analyses. The introductory course was attended by colleagues from the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and Australia.