Title
School health promotion and the consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages by secundary school adolescents: a multilevel story
Author
Vonk, L.
Eekhout, I.
Huijts, T.
Levels, M.
Jansen, M.
Publication year
2022
Abstract
Aims: Overweight among adolescents remains a serious concern in the western world and can have major health consequences in later life, such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Still, 33% of secondary school adolescents in the Netherlands consume sugar-sweetened beverages daily and over 26% do not consume water every day. The Dutch Healthy School approach was developed to stimulate healthier lifestyles by focusing on health education, school environments, identifying pupils’ health problems and school policy. We examined the variation between secondary schools regarding the daily consumption of water and sugarsweetened beverages and whether this variation can be explained by differences between schools regarding Healthy School characteristics, general school characteristics and the school population. Materials and methods: The design of this study was a cross-sectional multilevel case-control study. We used data from the national Youth Health Monitor of 2019 on secondary schools (grades 8 and 10) of seven public health services and combined these with information regarding the school context and Healthy School certification. Our outcomes were daily consumption of water and sugar-sweetened beverages. In total, 52,764 adolescents from 191 schools were analyzed. Results: The school level explained 2.49% of the variation in the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and 4.63% of the variation in the consumption of water. Healthy School certification did not explain this variation, yet some other school context factors did: the % of adolescents with high educated parents, the educational track of the adolescents and urbanicity (only for water consumption). Conclusion: Our findings did not show associations between Healthy School and the daily consumption of sugarsweetened beverages and water. However, our results indicated in what school contexts health promotion can be most beneficial. Future research should examine whether Healthy Schools can contribute to healthier lifestyles in different contextual settings. Results based on calculations by Maastricht University using non-public microdata from Statistics Netherlands. Under certain conditions, these microdata are accessible for statistical and scientific research. For further information: microdata@cbs.nl.
Subject
School health promotion
Multilevel
Secondary school
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:ff12f507-d782-4b30-bdad-0d6a81439eda
TNO identifier
977844
Publisher
Conventus Credo, Zagreb
Source
21st EUSUHM (European Union for School and University Health and Medicine) Congress School and Adolescent Health Priorities - Rethinking, Redefining, Responding, 29th Sept-2nd Oct 2022, Split, Coratia, 130
Document type
conference paper