Uncovering professionals' work and capacity to support healthy weight development and well-being in children and adolescents

Purpose

The purpose of the project is to map and understand the practices and capacities related to health promotion and prevention – especially healthy weight and well-being – of professionals working with children and adolescents. The professionals include:

• General practitioners
• Midwives
• Health nurses
• Teachers, managers and educators in daycare centres, schools, after-school clubs, leisure clubs and youth educational programmes

A survey design is developed for each target group of professionals. The design often includes a combination of:

• Desk research, including literature reviews, key legal texts and policy documents.
• Qualitative studies.
• Survey mapping.

The first surveys to be carried out in 2024 will focus on general practice and primary and secondary schools.

Background information

Professionals have the power to influence the health and well-being of children, adolescents and their families. That is one of the main reasons why professionals are important to our work.

The discovery is part of our competence development track and will be used as a knowledge base for targeted future initiatives. In other words, we need more knowledge about what is being done in practice – and what the opportunities and barriers are – in order to take the best possible action going forward. In addition, the discoveries should create synergy with other projects launched by us that relate to the groups of professionals concerned.

Partners 

The project is run by us. To ensure the validity and relevance of the survey results, we collaborate with many stakeholders. For example, we involve professionals and their interest organisations as well as other institutions and research environments that have knowledge and experience in the field.