In Brighton, a team at Further Education College (16-19 years) consisting of students, welfare lead, catering team, interested teacher, City council healthy catering coordinator and Jamie Oliver Foundation representative, have tested tools from HEPCOM’s homepage. University of Brighton HEPCOM Project Team guided the process as a participatory action research project.
The group had special focus on using whole school approaches, whereby the school sets out to increase knowledge and skills around healthy living but also provides a setting and environment which encourages healthy choices. An underlying principle is the involvement of students in the decision making and co-production of knowledge and practice. The subject was how to improve a healthy lunch at college
Read about the participatory workshop.
Poster no. 1: Putting fruit in the Meal Deal.
Poster no. 2: Hot Meal Deal.
This is a story about a second-grade class in central Finland who participated in a pilot project about physical activity. The aim of the project was to capture a case study of the range and diversity of children’s experiences and opinions: Which factors do eight- and nine-year-old children perceive as promoting or inhibiting their physical activity during the school day? The inspiration came from a tool at the HEPCOM platform, Shape Up, where children’s participation is an essential basis in planning, for example more functional environments and play areas at school.
Groups of children were asked to photograph factors that they found promoted and inhibited physical activity during the school day, and they came up with photos of for example weather appropriate shoes without shoelaces and a parking lot for cars where children were not allowed to come.
Then, after the photographic session, the children selected the photographs they wanted to talk about and were interviewed about them. The children were asked to recall the situations where the photos had been taken, which enabled her to hear the children’s descriptions of the photos. Their discussion about the photos showed a wide range of factors that can be addressed when planning or improving the possibilities for physical activities.
Read the article about the project.
In Ireland, a group of researchers from National University of Ireland Galway have consulted key stakeholders (young people, parents, teachers and youth workers) to explore their perceptions of the most efficient mechanisms and tools to disseminate research findings about youth health behaviours from HBSC (Health Behaviour in School-aged Children) which is a cross-national study, gaining insight into young people's well-being, health behaviours and their social context.
The stakeholders told them:
Young people would like to have other young people disseminating the information and want to receive it with minimum text and through visual and social media channels.
Parents, teachers and youth workers agreed that HBSC produced valuable information that should be widely disseminated. Teachers and youth workers receive far more information than they have time to read. Information, therefore, should be very focussed, targeted, relevant and specific.
Read more about this inquiry.
Read about the Irish HEPCOM Seminar 2015.
The HEPCOM platform has been developed to serve local authorities, local communities and professional practitioners, working with prevention of obesity and overweight among children and young people - for example, through healthy eating and physical activity. It can also be used by students at universities to learn about the process and methodology of health promotion projects.
The tools in the HEPCOM platform are organized in a systematic way by applying the management cycle, which illustrates an ideal working process for the planning, development, implementation and evaluation of projects, activities or interventions. By clicking on the different phases in the management cycle, you will find tools that are related to each specific phase which can assist and inspire you to work in a more structured and informed way.
The HEPCOM platform gathers tools that are developed and tested within, and from, a range of diverse health projects supported by EU funding. They are therefore sufficiently flexible to be applied within different European countries or provide inspiration to create specific local solutions based on the experiences of others. Even though some of the tools may not necessarily be recent, they are nevertheless still considered useful and relevant by the partner institutions behind HEPCOM.
HEPCOM project: preventing overweight and obesity among children and young people. The HEPCOM project aims to increase the number and quality of local community and school interventions for promoting healthy eating and physical activity among children and young people throughout Europe.
For questions concerning the content and technical issues of the HEPCOM learning platform, please contact:
CBO (lead project partner)
Churchillaan 11, 3527 GV Utrecht, The Netherlands.
P.O. Box 20064, 3502 LB Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Phone: +31 30 284 3982
E-mail: info@hepcom.eu
In these terms and conditions, “we” or “our” shall mean all or any partner(s) in the HEPCOM project.
Any commercial use of the material downloaded from hepcom.org is strictly forbidden.
The HEPCOM platform is offered to you conditioned on your acceptance without modification of the terms, conditions, and notices contained herein. Your use of the HEPCOM platform constitutes your agreement to all such terms, conditions, and notices.
The HEPCOM platform is for your personal and non-commercial use. You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, products or services obtained from the HEPCOM platform. Exception to the above condition is constituted by:
You may display and, subject to any expressly stated restrictions or limitations relating to specific material, electronically copy, download and print hard copy portions of the material from the different areas of the platform solely for your own non-commercial use.
The information provided by using the material downloadable from this platform, and the material itself, is provided without any representations or warranties, express or implied. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the medical, educational or other information on this platform or containing within the tools. Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing paragraph, we do not warrant or represent that the information on this platform or contained within the tool:
Nothing in this disclaimer will: