Title

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 behaviors


Description

An alarmingly low number of children meet public health guidelines for physical activity and healthy dietary behaviors, and are at increased risk of developing lifestyle-related diseases. Importantly, this burden is already unequally distributed at an early age. Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors are driven by complex mechanisms that differ across boys and girls growing up under different socio-economic circumstances.

Outdoor play is an important contributor to children's levels of physical activity. Yet, children growing up in underprivileged neighborhoods play less outside due to limited access to safe and attractive outdoor spaces and appropriate and affordable after school activities than other children. At the same time, today's children have abundant access to inexpensive energy-dense foods and online sedentary activities


Objectives and Results

B-challenged aims to address the complexity of equality in children's active outdoor play and healthy dietary behaviors by co-creating, implementing and evaluating interventions in the physical and social environment together with children growing up in socio-economically underprivileged neighborhoods and other key actors.

B-challenged introduces a multi-actor, inter-sectoral democratic approach in four European countries (Denmark, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands), including all key actors (eg children, parents, teachers, policy makers). We will closely collaborate with all key actors, conduct analyzes in European cohort data and consider the broader system (eg neighborhood, family) as well as previous lessons-learned. Therewith, B-challenged aims at structural, relevant and feasible improvements in the physical and social environment promoting children's active outdoor play and dietary behaviors. B-challenged will impact all key actors in the selected neighborhoods and far beyond through disseminating protocols and recommendations (research and policy) for upscaling the B-challenged approach.


IP IIS Aragon

Bartholomew Cross


Financing Agency

Financial grant awarded within the Call for International Collaboration Project of the AES-2023 of the Carlos III Health Institute, with file code AC23_2/00045, and linked to the Partnership for the Promotion of a European Research Area for Health (ERA4Health) (GA No. 101095426 of the EU Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme) / ERA4Health-HealthEquity (co-financed by the European Union).

Total Project Budget: €1.515.015

IISA Financing (ISCIII): €173.000


Coordinator

VU University Medical Center (Stichting VUmc), The Netherlands


Be a partner

- University of Southern Denmark (USD), Denmark
- Aragón Health Research Institute Foundation (IIS Aragón), Spain.
- Institute of Mother and Child, Poland.
- University of Bremen, Germany.


Duration

01/01/2024 – 31/12/2026 (36 months)


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