Green Z: Exploring the association of perceptions about climate change and planetary health literacy with behaviour, lifestyle, and health care use among adolescents and young adults
Today’s young people and young adults (‘Gen Z’) are growing up at a time when the effects of the climate crisis and environmental problems are undeniable. At the same time, there is a lack of the necessary fundamental changes in how we live on our planet to prevent exacerbation. In this study, we aim to understand the role the climate crisis plays in the lives of ‘Gen Z’. It focuses on how young people and young adults find, understand and apply information about the crisis to make informed choices about their health, lifestyle and healthcare use. Not much is yet known about these health skills in the context of planetary health.
The project will be carried out by Fabiola Müller, supervised by Tanja Vrijkotte, Mirjam Fransen and Margreet Harskamp – van Ginkel. Fabiola will use ABCD data and supplement it with focus group discussions among young people and young adults to gain insight into the following: How do young people and young adults think and feel about the climate crisis? How do they find and evaluate information? To what extent do they interpret information as relevant to (their) health? What kind of information (source) can lead to a change in perceptions and norms among young people and young adults? And how do they use their knowledge and skills to make informed choices about their health and lifestyle within the health system and society?
We interview high school-aged young people and young adults. In this way, we aim to understand how increasing independence and a new social environment affect the impact of and coping with the crisis. The knowledge gained can provide insights into what information best matches the knowledge, norms, and media use of ‘Gen Z’ and how it can encourage and empower them to make informed behavioural and health choices.
Connection: Co-creating community interventions on diet and physical activity to increase health equity in children and adolescents
Unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity are major causes of diseases and premature death, particularly among groups with a lower socio-economic status. Co-creation and collaboration across various sectors are essential to create a healthy and sustainable environment for nutrition and physical activity.
Connection is an international project focused on jointly developing measures for a healthier diet and more physical activity for children and young people growing up in vulnerable conditions. The project utilizes data from European cohort studies, including the ABCD study, to explore how the environment in early life influences eating and activity patterns among children and adolescents in different socio-economic contexts. Additionally, the relationship between behavior and health outcomes, such as growth patterns, body fat and cardiovascular health, is examined. This knowledge is used to co-create and implement interventions with young people. Finally, the impact of these interventions on behavior change and reducing health inequalities is assessed. Contactpersons are Sara Dieduksman and Marlies Visser.
B-challenged: A multi-actor approach in creating safe and attractive physical and social environments to promote children’s active outdoor play and healthy dietary behaviours
A worrying number of children do not meet guidelines for sufficient exercise and healthy eating, putting them at higher risk of chronic diseases such as obesity. Interventions aimed at improving the environment are needed to ensure that children exercise more and eat healthier, especially in underprivileged neighbourhoods.
B-challenged aims to give children more opportunities to play outside and reduce access to unhealthy food. We do this by using existing data from the ABCD study and the Idefix/I.family study to identify which interventions are theoretically most successful – with a focus on underprivileged neighbourhoods. Based on this, we will co-create and implement interventions in the environment (at school, in the neighbourhood), together with children and other key stakeholders (such as parents, teachers, and policymakers). B-challenged is an international project in which partners from science and practice work together. Contact person is Tanja Vrijkotte.
SmartCHANGE
SmartCHANGE is a European project, aimed at promoting the health and well-being of young people aged 5-19, to prevent cardiovascular disease and diabetes in the future. Using existing data on, for example, people’s lifestyle, environment, blood pressure, and metabolism over a long period of time, SmartCHANGE hopes to use machine learning methods to develop models that can predict these diseases. Machine learning involves computers learning from data themselves, rather than all knowledge being programmed into the computer by humans. This is a form of artificial intelligence, also known as AI. The AI models will be trained to analyse various health data from different age groups. Together with professionals in youth preventive healthcare, a user-friendly web application will be developed based on the AI models that can support them in assessing health risks of young people. Together with young people, a mobile health app is developed that can recommend changes in daily life in an engaging and personalised way to promote healthier habits.
By developing these applications together with young people and health professionals, SmartCHANGE hopes to contribute to a new way of working together in healthcare and to a healthier future for society. Young people are an important target group in health promotion, because an unhealthy lifestyle is often learned at a young age and behavioural change at an early age can be beneficial for health. Data from the ABCD study are used to create the AI models. Contact persons are Tanja Vrijkotte and Quint Olislagers.
GOLIAT
Phase 7 of the ABCD study is part of a collaboration with ISGLOBAL’s GOLIAT project. This is an international study involving 11 European countries, Japan, Korea, and the US. The GOLIAT project was established to investigate the possible effect of electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMF), with a special focus on 5G, on the health of young people. This means that we will also collect information on the volume of phone, tablet and computer use of participants. Contact persons are Noekie van Lieshout and Tanja Vrijkotte.
Early life factors and puberty timing
Today, many doctors accept the fact that the age at which puberty begins in boys and girls is steadily declining, while this discovery is also controversial. What factors underlie this trend? Why are our children becoming biologically mature earlier and earlier? And what are the medical and psychosocial implications of this? Answers to these questions are still unclear.
In the PhD project ‘Early Life Factors and Pubertal Timing’, Siyu Zhou will investigate the association of early life factors with the onset of puberty and the potential later influence on psychosocial health in adolescence (especially menstrual complaints). For this, she will use longitudinal data from the ABCD participants that is already collected, as well as data that will be collected during the new measurement phase 7. We hope to find modifiable somatic and psychosocial factors from peri-pregnancy through childhood that are associated with early timing of puberty. This knowledge is then needed to develop effective interventions that can be used early in life (pregnant-postnatal women) to prevent early timing of puberty.
Equal-Life project
How do you make sure you are comfortable in your own skin and stay that way? How do you keep mental problems at bay? This is a challenge for adults, but certainly also for children and adolescents. Children and young people grow up in very different environments: at home, at school, on the road, and during sports and games. The quality of those environments differs, for example, in the number of facilities, such as parks, playgrounds, and sports clubs. The environment can invite you to engage in healthy behaviour and meet others, or make it more difficult. For instance, it matters whether that environment is green and clean and there is no unwanted noise, but also what we ourselves do in that environment, such as the use of screens, healthy eating. and exercise. Little research has been done on the complex relationship between all these environmental factors and their influence on mental health in young people. Equal-Life is a large European project that brings together mental health data from studies from eight countries and links it to environmental factors for different age groups. On this basis, combinations of environmental factors important for healthy development and mental health are identified. Thanks to projects like Equal-Life, in five years’ time we will have a better idea of what we can do together to also make Amsterdam a city where children and young people can grow up mentally healthy. For more information, watch this video about Equal Life. The contact person for this project is Tanja Vrijkotte.
Urban Mental Health study
Research has shown that 43% of young people in the Netherlands struggle with psychological complaints, a large proportion of which involve anxiety, stress, and/or mood symptoms, whether or not combined with gaming, alcohol, and/or drug dependence (MIND, 2016). The Urban Mental Health (UMH) study focuses on factors that influence the development of anxiety, depression, and/or addiction in young people born in Amsterdam. Research will include: 1) the complex interplay between factors from the environment in which a child grows up in relation to mental health; 2) how to measure metropolitan discomfort; 3) how anxiety and a sombre mood are associated with substance and media use; 4) what early childhood factors influence the development of anxiety, depression, and/or addiction in adolescence and young adulthood.
For this study, we plan to regularly administer short questionnaires to the ABCD participants to gain more insight into how the adolescents develop over time. The project is conducted by Hanan Bozhar, supervised by Susanne de Rooij (epidemiology, Amsterdam UMC), Helle Larsen (developmental psychology, UvA), Anja Lok (psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC), and Tanja Vrijkotte (public and occupational health, Amsterdam UMC). The project runs from 2020 to 2024 and is part of the Centre for Urban Mental Health of the UvA.
European Child Cohort Network (ECCN)
ECCN is a large European project. This project investigates the impact of stress in young children on health. Find out which European cohorts are participating here. All data from the different cohorts are put into a so-called Datashield, in which researchers can do analyses without having to send data to them (the data remain on our own secure server). ABCD contact person: Sara Dieduksman.
Hogeschool van Amsterdam
Healthy eating habits are important for optimal growth and development during both childhood and later life. And also for developing a healthy weight and healthy weight development later in life. Research shows that more and more children are developing overweight and obesity and that these rates are higher or lower in children from certain ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds.
At age 5, comprehensive nutritional information was collected. Based on this comprehensive nutritional information, we define dietary patterns. We do this in different methodological ways. We investigate whether certain dietary patterns are more common among children from certain ethnic and socio-economic groups. We then investigate how these dietary patterns are related to weight and body composition (fat mass and lean mass) at ages 10 and 12 years. In the video below, researcher Ir. Viyan Rashid tells more about the project (Dutch video).