Differences in school environment, school policy and actions regarding overweight prevention between Dutch schools. A nationwide survey

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Wanda JE Bemelmans¹  Salome Scholtens¹  Lideke Middelbeek¹  Suzanne I Rutz²  Goof Buijs³ 

[1] Centre for Prevention and Health Services Research, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), P.O. Box 1, 3720 BA, Bilthoven, The Netherlands;The Netherlands Health Care Inspectorate, P.O. Box 20584, 1001 NN, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;The Netherlands Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (NIGZ), P.O. Box 500, 3440 AM, Woerden, The Netherlands;

关键词: School Level;    Soft Drink;    High Education School;    Unhealthy Food;    School Size;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2458-10-42

 received in 2009-04-01, accepted in 2010-01-28,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSchools are regarded as an important setting for the prevention of overweight. This study presents a nationally representative picture of the obesogenity of the school environment, the awareness of schools regarding overweight, and actions taken by the schools aiming at overweight prevention. In addition, differences between school levels were studied.MethodsIn 2006-2007, questionnaires were sent to all Dutch secondary schools (age group 12-18 years). Prevalences of the outcome variables were calculated for the schools in total and by school level. The association between school level and outcome variables were analysed by a log linear regression.ResultsUnhealthy foods and drinks are widely available at secondary schools. One third of the schools indicated that overweight has increased among students and half of the schools agreed that schools were (co)responsible for the prevention of overweight. Only 3% of the schools have a policy on overweight prevention. Small differences were observed between vocational education schools and higher education schools. The presence of vending machines did not differ by school level, but at vocational education schools, the content of the vending machines was less healthy.ConclusionThis study describes the current situation at schools which is essential for the development and evaluation of future overweight prevention policies and interventions. In general, secondary schools are not actively involved in overweight prevention and the nutritional environment at most schools could be improved. The small differences between school levels do not give reason for a differential approach for a certain school level for overweight prevention.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Scholtens et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.