The annual meeting of the Portuguese Society of the Study of Obesity

Last Friday I gave a keynote lecture at the annual meeting of the Portuguese Society of the Study of Obesity (congresso portugues de obesidad). Together with one other keynote speaker, Geoffrey Williams of the University of Rochester, we were the only ones presenting in English. Because my Portuguese is complete non existent, I did not get much off the other presentations, but I understood that the conference was mainly clinically oriented, aiming to share information on obesity treatment from a primarily clinical perspective. Professor Williams and myself were also two of very few who talked on a behavioural perspective of obesity treatment and prevention.
Professor Williams, an expert on Self Determination Theory (SDT) and on interventions using that theory for a range of health behaviour changes, including obesity treatment, gave a very nice and complete overview of the evidence for SDT-based interventions. He presented great mediation analyses that indicated that the cornerstones of SDT, autonomy and control, indeed mediate the effects of SDT-based interventions.
I provided an overview of the rationale and evidence for obesogenic social, physical and economical environments, informed by results of a number of studies I was and am involved in, such as the Health Promotion through Obesity Prevention in Europe (HOPE) project and the EuropeaN Energy balance Research to prevent excessive weight Gain among Youth (ENERGY) project. Click here for a handout of my presentation.

EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research 2009 policy day

Last Friday the program directors, department and committee chairs and a number of senior researchers from the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research met at ‘The Tides’ in Overveen. Based on SWOT analyses of EMGO+ and its research programs, with this day we were aiming to finalize the 2010 policy plans for the four EMGO+ research programs, and to discuss EMGO’s performance and ambitions in a perspective of further internationalization of research related to EMGO’s mission. The internationalization topic was introduced by Professor Jaap Seidell who argued, based on analyses of the times higher education world university rankings and the academic ranking of world universities (‘Shanghai University Ranking’) that the VU University and the VU University Medical Center do not do very good in these rankings, despite good publication and citation indexes, and that lack of true internationalization, indicated by international staff, students, and established and formal collaborations with universities/research centers in other countries is an important determinant of our lower ranking. The policy plans that will importantly aim at further internationalization will be finalized in the next few weeks and then published on the EMGO+ website.

Cycling in Holland and Norway, associations with overweight

Active transportation is a behavior that might contribute to energy balance and obesity prevention. However, no clear association between active commuting to school and weight status has been reported in the international literature. Also, recent studies suggest that cycling to school might be more health enhancing than walking to school. As keen cyclist, I was happy to be involved in a nice study first authored by Elling Bere on this issue. The purpose of the study was to assess association between cycling to school and weight status in two European cities,
Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Kristiansand, Norway, where cycling to school
remains common. Data from two studies, ENDORSE (Rotterdam) and Youth in Balance (Kristiansand), were used. The adolescents were categorized as cyclist or non-cyclist based on questionnaires on the usual mode of transportation to school.
A total of 25% and 18% were categorized as overweight, and 35% and 31% were categorized as cyclists, in Rotterdam and Kristiansand, respectively.
Cyclist were almost half as likely to be overweight in both cities than non-cyclists, after adjusting for possible confounders.

ENERGY project meeting in Durham, UK

Last Thursday and Friday, Professor Carolyn Summerbell and her team from Durham University hosted the second ENERGY project meeting at the Wolfson Research Institute.

ENERGY stands for “EuropeaN Energy balance Research to prevent excessive weight Gain among Youth : Theory and evidence-based development and validation of an intervention scheme to promote healthy nutrition and physical activity”. It is a European Commission funded project, within the DG Research 7th framework programme.

The project is specifically aiming to contribute to knowledge about obesity prevention among schoolchildren, aged 10-12 years

The ENERGY project is now well underway and in a critical stage. ENERGY is supported by a strong consortium of research institutes and groups throughout Europe. Teams from Deakin University, Ghent University and the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research at VU University Medical Center have conducted a series of reviews on important risk behaviours for overweight and obesity in children, of correlates and predictors of such risk behaviours, and of mediators of intervention effects in this age group. The results of these reviews (whch will be made available via the ENERGY website) have been combined with other evidence-bases to inform the development of a questionnaire for children and their parents, as well as a school environment audit instrument. These measurement instruments will be used in a large cross-European school-based survey to further study possible determinants of obesity, overweight and their risk behaviours in this age group across Europe. Professor Yannis Manios and his team from the University of Harikopio in Greece lead the work package on this survey in close collaboration with the Rescon research organization from the Netherlands.

At the Deakin meeting the development of the questionnaire and the planning of the survey study were the central, and we made good progress to deliver final drafts of these instruments in the next days and weeks. Pretesting of the child questionnaire is scheduled to take place in the two weeks time.

Building a research infrastructure elsewhere

I have written a little bit about my university's efforts to improve the research infrastructure. We need better facilities for data-management, biobanking, and biostatistical and project management support to maintain and further improve our improved research output (as indicated by the growing number of publications, citations, and large research project acquisitions). When money is no real issue, building a research infrastructure can be done somewhat differently. In Saudi Arabia the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)is being build. Science Magazine has published a story on this initative. According to the Science publication "Thinking big is in the DNA of KAUST. The university's namesake, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, decided 3 years ago to set aside billions of dollars for an institution designed to help the country move from an oil-based to a knowledge economy (Science, 8 June 2007, p. 1409)." Click here to check out the story.

ENDORSE (environmental determinants of obesity related behaviors in Rotterdam schoolchildren)

Dr. Klazine van der Horst defended her thesis today on the exploration of environmental determinants of overweight and energy-balance behaviours in Dutch youth. Het thesis is based on the ENDORSE (environmental determinants of obesity related behaviors in Rotterdam schoolchildren) study. This study is one of the first to systematically explore potential school environment, neighbourhood environment, family environment and personal correlates of behaviours that may induce unnecessary weight gain among adolescents. Her studies indicate that social environmental influences, especially parental influences such as food and physical activity related parenting practices and parental modelling behaviour, may be more important than physical environmental factors, i.e. factors related to availability and accessibility of healthy food and physical activity options.
It is very likely that the present-day obesity epidemic is caused by changes in the physical environment, i.e. changes towards an overabundant accessibility of energy-dense foods and towards a lack of unavoidable or necessary daily physical activities. However, in this physical environment, it appears that other factors, such as social environmental influences, now discriminate between young people who engage more or less in obesogenic behaviours.

The published papers included in Klazine's thesis are:

van der Horst K, Oenema A, Te Velde SJ, Brug J. Gender, ethnic and school type differences in overweight and energy balance-related behaviours among Dutch adolescents.
Int J Pediatr Obes. 2009 May 15:1-10. [Epub ahead of print]

Bere E, van der Horst K, Oenema A, Prins R, Brug J. Socio-demographic factors as correlates of active commuting to school in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Prev Med. 2008 Jul 8. [Epub ahead of print]

van der Horst K, Timperio A, Crawford D, Roberts R, Brug J, Oenema A.The school food environment associations with adolescent soft drink and snack consumption.
Am J Prev Med. 2008 Sep;35(3):217-23. Epub 2008 Jul 10.

van der Horst K, Oenema A, van de Looij-Jansen P, Brug J. The ENDORSE study: research into environmental determinants of obesity related behaviors in Rotterdam schoolchildren.
BMC Public Health. 2008 Apr 28;8:142.

Ferreira I, van der Horst K, Wendel-Vos W, Kremers S, van Lenthe FJ, Brug J. Environmental correlates of physical activity in youth - a review and update.
Obes Rev. 2007 Mar;8(2):129-54. Review.
Kremers SP, van der Horst K, Brug J. Adolescent screen-viewing behaviour is associated with consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages: the role of habit strength and perceived parental norms.
Appetite. 2007 May;48(3):345-50. Epub 2006 Nov 28.

van der Horst K, Kremers S, Ferreira I, Singh A, Oenema A, Brug J. Perceived parenting style and practices and the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages by adolescents.
Health Educ Res. 2007 Apr;22(2):295-304. Epub 2006 Aug 14.
van der Horst K, Oenema A, Ferreira I, Wendel-Vos W, Giskes K, van Lenthe F, Brug J. A systematic review of environmental correlates of obesity-related dietary behaviors in youth.Health Educ Res. 2007 Apr;22(2):203-26. Epub 2006 Jul 21. Review.

The 20th anniversary of the Department of Nursing Home Medicine

Yesterday, the department of nursing home medicine of the VU University medical center celebrated its 20th anniversary. In 1989, the first training course for nursing home physicians in the world was established at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (now the VU university medical center). Now, 20 years later, 750 nursing home physicians have been trained at VU medical center. Also the research at the department, embedded in the EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research, has seen a spectacular growth with more than 400 scientific publications, and an impressive list of PhD graduates. The twentieth anniversary was celebrated October 1st, in Artis Zoo Amsterdam with more than 200 visitors, many of them trained at the VUmc. They enjoyed speeches of national and international speakers. After the head as well as founding father of the department, Prof. Miel Ribbe gave a brief introduction, profs. Douwe Draaisma from Groningen University, Paul Schnabel, director of the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, and Sheryl Zimmerman from the University of North Carolina provided their entertaining, thought provoking and evidence-based views on aging, the elderly and elderly care. After a tour along the elderly animals in the Zoo, the people present, and Miel Ribbe most of all, were pleasantly surprised by the dean of VUmc, Prof. Wim Stalman, who proudly announced that Prof. Miel Ribbe was honoured by Queen Beatrix with a knighthood, among others for his excellent work in establishing, nursing, promoting and disseminating the art and science of nursing home medicine of these outstanding performances.