The EMGO annual report 2006 has been distributed

A few weeks ago the EMGO 2006 annual report (see http://www.emgo.nl/) has been distributed. The publication of this report was a bit later than in earlier years, also because of the change in management of the institute. The annual report gives a comprehensive overview of EMGO's research infrastructure, input in terms of people and budget, and of its output and accomplishments in terms of publications, grants and societal impact. If you want a copy of the annual report, please send an email to secretariaat.emgo@vumc.nl.

This annual report was the first that I had the pleasure to send out as the new director of EMGO. But since I was only appointed on April 1 2007, I had no responsibility for EMGO's 2006 output and accomplishments. Therefore I can easily brag about EMGO's success in 2006: over 400 international publications, more than 40 doctoral theses, and many millions in grant money obtained. This provides a very good point of departure for establishing EMGO's future (5-10 years) policy in the coming fall. A policy discussion within the EMGO institute has already been launched to establish EMGO's priorities for the years to come. The results of this discussion will be documented in a policy plan that will be discussed on the EMGO 2007 policy day, November 2, 2007.

ISBNPA 2007 evaluation results

June 21-23 the annual meeting of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (ISBNPA, http://www.isbnpa.org/) was held in Olso, Norway. ISBNPA is a research society, so evidently we did some evaluation research to evaluate what the participants thought about the conference program, venue, social events, et cetera. The Executive Committee (EC) of ISBNPA (see the picture of the EC) and the organising committee of the next annual meeting (which will be in Banff, Canada, also see a picture of three members of the local organising committee, chaired by professor Wendy Rogers, the lady in the middle). Information on the Banff ISBNPA 2008 conference can be found at http://www.silvanesti-enterprises.com/isbnpa/. Banff is a fantastic town: in the middle of the Canadian Rockies and easily accessible from Calgary International Airport. The conference will be at a very nice venue (see http://www.rimrockresort.com).

As I reported here before, the conference in Olso was well-attended, we had a record high number of over 500 participants. The evaluation indicates that the conference was also generally well-appreciated. 75% of participants found the conference very good to excellent, and only 2.4% found ISBNPA 2007 'poor'. Especially the keynote presentations and symposiums were well appreciated. Most negative remarks were about the food offered during the conference: too few vegetarian options! Good food taking diet-preferences into account is of course of utmost importance at a conference on behavioral nutrition and physical activity, and we will certainly take this into account next year in Banff.

Gaining weight in social networks

The July 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (see http://cme.nejm.org/) includes a paper by Christakis and Fowler from Harvard Medical School that reports on a social network analysis of the data of the Framingham Study (see http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/framingham/). The paper shows that people's likelihood to become overweight is much higher when their friends, siblings and/or spouses become overweight. Neighbours' weight changes appeared to have no effects. The study thus suggests that obesity spreads in social networks. Recent reviews of the literature (see for example Ferreira et al. Obesity Reviews 2007;8(2):129-54 [ http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1467-7881&site=1] and Van der Horst et al. Health Education Research2007;22(2):203-26 [http://her.oxfordjournals.org/]) suggest that social environmental factors are important determinants of physical activity and nutrition behaviours. These studies suggest that more and better effort are needed to use social network approaches in obesity prevention. Promising initiatives such as the La Ville Sante (see http://www.teachers.tv/video/119 for a video presentation on this initiative) use a strong community approach with social networking to promote health behaviours in order to help people to prevent unnecessary weight gain.

Sedentary behaviour or physical activity?

Several studies indicate that people who spend a lot of time on sedentary activities, especially watching TV, are more likley to be overweight. This ralation between sedentary behaviour and weight status appears to be rather independent of the amount of physical activity people engage in. Indeed, people who do a lot of physical activities, may also engange in a lot of sedentary behaviour. Sport activities may make you tired and sit down! A study by Saskia te Velde and others published in BMC Public Health suggest that sedentary behaviours and sport activities cluster among teenage boys (see http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-7-16.pdf).

But what is a more important risk factor for becoming overweight, lack of physical activity or being sedentary? A recent study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (http://www.ijbnpa.org/) shows that 'screen time' (TV, video, computer) at age 15 did predict obesity at age 21, while medium and high intensity physical activity did not. This effect was strongest among girls (http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/pdf/1479-5868-4-26.pdf). This is one of very few longitudinal studies on this topic, and the results suggest that getting adolescents away from their screens is important for obesity prevention.

Culture is in the amniotic fluid…?

At a pre-conference workshop of the 10th European Nutrition Conference in Paris I was one of the speakers on Acquisition of Food-Related Behaviours in Children. The first speaker of the day, Luc Marlier from Strasbourg, France, gave a very interesting and amusing talk on environmental influences on food choice very early in life. He presented his research that clearly indicates that children already obtain food preferences before birth, based on exposure to odours in the amniotic fluid. To which odours the child is exposed before birth is dependent on the eating habits and food choices of the mother. He claimed, therefore, that cultural environmental influences on food choice are already apparent in the womb. During the rest of the day the acquisition of food preferences in children was explored from a genetics perspective, from a social psychology perspective and from a public health perspective, and the important roles of parents, schools and marketing in influencing children’s food choices was highlighted. The different presentations will be made available via the Danone Institute website www.danoneinstitute.org.

After a succesful ISBNPA conference: physical activity!

The sixth annual meeting of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity ended on June 23 with a closing session. Professor Tom Baranowski, the founder and first president of ISBNPA (on the right on the photo; the others are also former presidents of ISBNPA: Gaston Godin and Ron Kleinman), concluded that the conference was a succes with a record-high number of participants and presentations, with high-quality presentations addressing many key issues in behavioral nutrition and physical activity research. Tom Baranowski also stated that upcoming conferences should try to include more presentations on intervention studies, and that the society should continue to try to attract more researchers from countries and regions other that Western Europe, North America and Australia.

After the conference I partcipated in some intensive physical activity myself: a great 13-day bike tour through the westen part of Norway with my partner, Astrid (see how summer-like the higher mountains in Norway are in June). We cycled from Gol to Alesund and back, visiting the Sogne fjell and fjord and many other highlights.

The sixth ISBNPA conference is ongoing!

Yesterday the sixth annual meeting of the International Society of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (ISBNPA, see http://www.isbnpa.org/) has started in the Folket Huset conference center in Oslo, Norway. After professor Knut Inge Klepp as the chair of the local organising committee and myself as the incoming president of the society gave a brief word of welcome to all the delegates, Dr. Heath McDonald of Deakin University, Australia, gave a very interesting opening keynote on marketing to children. His key message was that a ban on advertising to children may not be a very effective way to help to prevention childhood obesity, since many other way of marketing are in place that are more effective and that will not suffer from advertising bans. After this keynote there was a very pleasant and lively opening reception.
This year’s ISBNPA meeting attracted a record-number of participants, over 500, compared to the 200-350 in earlier years. This is a great accomplishment. ISBNPA is growing into a serious society, also because the ISBNPA journal, the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity (see http://www.ijbnpa.org/) is now officially tracked to establish an official impact factor (the preliminary IF is > 3.0!).
Today the conference is nicely on track with a great keynote by professor Leanne Birch from Pen State University, USA, on parental and early childhood influences on children’s eating behaviors followed by different parallel sessions on behavioural nutrition and physical activity issues.
Many thanks to the local organisers, chaired by professor Knut Inge Klepp and strongly coordinated by Dr. Nanna Lien, for making this possible.