European Standards of Care for Newborn Health-A project protocol

AIM

Among children who receive hospital care, preterm infants are Europe's largest group, whose numbers are continually increasing. Currently, no pan-European standards of care for preterm or critically ill infants are available, except for a few specific topics, and practices vary widely in different regions.

METHODS

The European Foundation for the Care of Newborn Infants (EFCNI) has initiated a transdisciplinary collaboration project to provide agreed standards for high-quality perinatal and neonatal care, whose implementation will ensure fairer and more equitable care across Europe. This will improve care for these vulnerable infants and their families, ameliorate the long-term conditions found in preterm and critically ill infants and enhance the quality of family life of affected families. More than 220 experts-healthcare professionals, patient representatives and other relevant stakeholders-have come together for the first time to develop a broad reference guidance in neonatology and associated fields.

RESULTS

Ninety-six standards on 11 overarching topic areas were developed and endorsed.

CONCLUSION

This reference framework serves as a basis for the development of binding national standards for high-quality care. A robust translation and implementation strategy is facilitated, with the goal of improved health outcomes following preterm birth all around Europe.

How Older Citizens in Germany Perceive and Handle Their Food Environment-A Qualitative Exploratory Study

Apart from individual factors like knowledge or personal motivation, the environment also influences a person’s eating behaviour. Food environments can be described as the collective physical, economic, policy and sociocultural surroundings, opportunities and conditions that influence people’s food choices and nutritional status. In order to explore how older citizens in rural Germany perceive and handle their food environment, we conducted semi-structured face-to-face interviews with 35 older adults (71 ± 7 years), asking about micro-, meso- and macro-level influences on eating habits. Participants reported social factors to be crucial in shaping their diets, such as preferences of family members or social expectations connected to roles (guest, host). On a physical level, structural aspects and resources in their nearby surroundings influenced shopping and eating behaviour (for example access to an own vegetable garden, local shopping facilities and restaurants). Macro-level influences such as the food industry were hardly mentioned. Participants noticed that the environment affects their diets but dealt with undesired influences using strategies of adaptation and behaviour change, rather than challenging the environmental influences. Public health projects should raise the awareness of the multiple environmental influences on eating behaviour and also help people to create healthier food environments.

How Health Promoters Can Assess Capacity Building Processes in Setting-Based Approaches-Development and Testing of a Monitoring Instrument

Background: Health promoters often use stakeholder groups to jointly plan and implement local interventions. Stakeholder groups should take over responsibility to later run the health promotion program independently. Monitoring this process of capacity building can help health promoters improve the quality of the process. Instruments for the systematic assessment of capacity building among stakeholder groups are scarce. The goal of this study was to develop, and pilot test a generic assessment instrument for setting-based capacity building. Methods: We drafted a semi-standardized monitoring instrument to be used in stakeholder groups in various settings. This “EVA-protocol” (short for evaluation protocol) was based on capacity building domains e.g., leadership, resource mobilization. It was pilot implemented in a research network on increasing an active lifestyle in various settings. The respective health promoters documented 78 meetings of 15 different stakeholder groups. We performed feedback interviews and member checking among the facilitating health promoters, asking for comprehensibility, length, usability and perceived benefits of the instrument. Findings: Data collected in the “EVA-protocol” helped the facilitating health promoters understand the development of competences and capacities in the stakeholder groups and identify factors that favor or hinder the capacity building process. The instrument was rated as user friendly, but it was remarked that it is best filled out by two persons and reflected upon by those to offer the greatest benefit. Not all projects could afford this procedure due to lack of time/staff resources. Conclusions: The drafted instrument can serve as quality management tool for health promoters who facilitate participatory stakeholder groups in different settings and intend to build capacities for sustainable health promotion structures.

German senior citizens’ capabilities for physical activity: a qualitative study

Sen’s capability approach (CA) has found its way into health promotion over the last few years. The approach takes both individual factors as well as social and environmental conditions into account and therefore appears to have great potential to explore opportunities for (‘capabilities’) and barriers to active lifestyles. Thus, our objective in this study was to investigate which capabilities senior citizens perceive to have available to them in order to be physically active. In Southern Germany, we conducted 26 semi-standardized interviews with senior citizens aged 66–97, as well as 9 interviews with key persons who have close contact to senior citizens in their work life. We identified 11 capabilities which the interviewees considered as important in leading an active lifestyle. They could be grouped into four domains: (1) individual resources, (2) social interactions and norms, (3) living conditions and (4) organizational environment. Results highlight the need for health-promoting interventions that widen the range of capabilities on social and environmental levels in a way that individuals can freely choose to be as physically active as they like. The results make clear that interventions should not only target and involve older adults themselves, but also their families, nursing home staff or community representatives, because these groups are important in shaping older adults’ capabilities for an active lifestyle.

Empowering senior citizens for healthy nutrition in Germany: A pilot study

Main goal of this study was to analyse how empowerment processes and bottom-up activities aimed at healthier food choices and food environment could be initiated among a group of senior citizens (between 60 and 75 years old). The intervention was set up as a pilot study in a rural community (15,000 inhabitants) in the federal state of Bavaria, South Eastern Germany. A process evaluation documented how group formation and empowerment processes developed during the course of the intervention. Extensive field notes were taken in 27 meetings, interviews (n = 13) and focus groups (n = 4) were conducted with participants and key persons at different points of the intervention. Data were analysed using content analysis. The intervention succeeded in motivating senior citizens to participate in regular meetings over 11 months. During the intervention, the group members' awareness of factors influencing their eating behaviour increased. Furthermore, they developed ideas to improve the community's food environment and accomplished duties needed to implement these ideas. However, initiating empowerment processes, especially in terms of fostering leadership and transferring responsibility, took longer than expected and could be realised only partially. The findings support a further use and evaluation of the empowerment approach for addressing nutritional aspects among senior citizens.

Empowerment for healthy nutrition in German communities: a study framework

Empowerment is seen as a key strategy for sustainable health promotion efforts. However, there is only limited research on how to link the empowerment approach to the promotion of healthy eating, which is a major current public health issue. The article presents the development of a study framework for implementing and evaluating an empowerment intervention for healthy nutrition. This framework was created for a community intervention study meaning to involve elderly citizens in Bavaria, Germany. The study protocol was developed in an iterative process basing on (i) literature reviews on the topics empowerment in relation to healthy nutrition and mixed-methods evaluation, (ii) workshops with empowerment and public health experts and (iii) consultations with local community representatives. Through these measures we identified good practice criteria as well as specific challenges of integrating empowerment and healthy nutrition, e.g. engaging people in healthy nutrition, reconciling participants' nutrition preferences with public health nutrition priorities and evaluating bottom-up activities in the community. Consequences for the study design were deducted from the literature and the consultations, e.g. practical recommendations as to how power could be gradually assigned to group members. A qualitative mixed-method evaluation design was chosen to capture emergent empowerment processes. The study framework presented here is the first on empowerment and nutrition to provide explicit guidance on how empowerment may be applied to healthy nutrition and implemented and evaluated in the community context.

Evaluation of Empowerment in Health Promotion Interventions: A Systematic Review

Although empowerment is one of the core principles of the World Health Organization's approach to health promotion, there are no standards, best practice recommendations, or guidelines for evaluating empowerment within interventions. For the development of effective empowerment promoting interventions, adequate study designs, methods, and indicators for assessing empowerment are essential. In order to better understand which evaluation procedures have been used so far, and which advantages and disadvantages are connected to them, we systematically reviewed empowerment-based health promotion interventions. We included 26 studies, which use a broad variety of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods designs and various data collection methods; qualitative and mixed-methods designs predominated. The quantitative measurement instruments are heterogeneous: Mainly self-designed or modified scales are applied. All studies consider indicators reflecting individual competencies and motivations, whereas indicators capturing the organizational and political components of empowerment are less common. Involving target group members in the development of evaluation procedures and combining different data sources are mentioned as specific steps to improve the quality of data collection. Given the flexible and context-dependent nature of empowerment approaches, the development of a "gold standard" for its evaluation seems unrealistic. However, the analyzed studies can be used to deduce recommendations that may help to conduct high-quality evaluations of empowerment, for example, mixed-methods designs, participation of target groups, and reflective loops within the research team.

Online social networking sites-a novel setting for health promotion?

Among adolescents, online social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook are popular platforms for social interaction and may therefore be considered as 'novel settings' that could be exploited for health promotion. In this article, we examine the relevant definitions in health promotion and literature in order to analyze whether key characteristics of 'settings for health promotion' and the socio-ecological settings approach can be transferred to SNS. As many of our daily activities have shifted to cyberspace, we argue that online social interaction may gain more importance than geographic closeness for defining a 'setting'. While exposition to positive references to risk behavior by peers may render the SNS environment detrimental to health, SNS may allow people to create their own content and therefore foster participation. However, those health promotion projects delivered on SNS up until today solely relied on health education directed at end users. It remains unclear how health promotion on SNS can meet other requirements of the settings approach (e.g. building partnerships, changing the environment). As yet, one should be cautious in terming SNS a 'setting'.