Developing a school-based intervention with adolescents to promote a healthy lifestyle: a co-creation approach

This project (as part of work package 3 or WP3) aims to develop, implement and evaluate a school-based intervention to promote healthy behaviour in adolescents using a co-creation approach. This approach requires maximal participation of the adolescents and other stakeholders, and suggests there is shared-decision making between all co-creators. Two ESRs will closely work together to bring this project to a good end: this ESR specifically focuses on the co-creation process in which researchers, adolescents and other stakeholders (such as teachers, parents) actively collaborate on designing the intervention, whereas the other ERSR (ESR8) focuses on the implementation and evaluation of the co-created intervention. The co-creation at school will follow a co-creation protocol, including various participatory methods, to facilitate a smooth development process.

This co-creation project at school is one of the four settings in which co-creation will be conducted in real-life (others are the workplace (WP4), the health care setting (WP5) and the community (WP6)). The co-creation at school will be inspired by an evidence-based co-creation methodology for health promotion and supported by digital tools, developed as part of WP1 and WP2. This iterative process of theoretical development and testing in real-life conditions requires a strong collaboration between all ESRs within Health CASCADE.

The supervising board consists of five persons (prof. Maïté Verloigne; prof. Greet Cardon; prof. Benedicte Deforche from Ghent University; prof. Teatske Altenburg from Amsterdam UMC and a staff member from the non-academic sector) with a lot of expertise in participatory and co-creation research; developing, implementing and evaluating school-based interventions; and health promotion in general among adolescents. The two ESRs will work (and be located) at Ghent University in two departments at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences: 50% at the department of Public Health and Primary Care in the research group Health Promotion (Prof. Maïté Verloigne and prof. Benedicte Deforche) and 50% at the department of Movement and Sports Sciences in the research group Physical activity and Health.