10th European Public Health Conference: Parallel sessions 157
5.N. Lifestyle in childhood and adolesence
Mainstream print media representations of childhood
obesity in the United Kingdom and Sweden
Amy Nimegeer
A Nimegeer1, M Lof1, C Patterson1, J van Hooft2, S Hilton1
1
MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow,
Glasgow, UK
2
Karolinksa Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Contact: amy.nimegeer@glasgow.ac.uk
Background
Childhood obesity is associated with a range of chronic diseases
and economic costs. The UK is among the European countries
with the highest obesity prevalence, while Sweden is among
those with the lowest. In each country, obesity is socio-
economically patterned, and tackling childhood obesity has
been identified as a policy priority. Mass media framing of the
drivers of, and potential solutions to health issues can influence
public and political opinion on necessary policy responses.
Methods
We analysed and compared UK and Swedish national news-
paper representations of childhood obesity to identify how the
issue has been framed to inform policy advocacy. Research
comprised quantitative content analysis of 1483 articles about
childhood obesity (757 UK, 726 Swedish) published between
1996 and 2014.
Results
Representations of the causes of childhood obesity shifted
from an individual focus to a societal focus in each country
between 1996 and 2014. UK and Swedish media presented
similar representations of childhood obesity’s growth, its link
to health risks, and the extent to which it is driven by diet,
physical inactivity and parental practices. Food and drink
industry marketing was mentioned relatively infrequently in
each country. However, the two countries differed in terms of:
whether they associated childhood obesity with males or
females; coverage of the socioeconomically and geographically
patterned nature of the problem; and the role played by the
food environment.
Conclusions
The observed shift towards a socially-driven framing of
childhood obesity may foster acceptance of population-level
solutions, and the similarity of trends in the UK and Sweden
might be indicative of wider supranational trends. Conversely,
differences between each country’s framing of the problem
highlight the need for public health advocacy for environ-
mental, population-level interventions to be tailored to specific
national policy debates.
Key messages:
 UK and Swedish media have increasingly framed childhood
obesity as societally-driven, rather than driven by indivi-
duals, which could foster public acceptance of population-
level solutions.
 Nuanced differences in UK and Swedish media representa-
tions of childhood obesity highlight the need for policy
advocacy strategies to be tailored to national contexts.
Children as active citizens within resilient and healthy
communities
Elise Sijthoff
ES Sijthoff
Children’s International Press Centre, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Contact: elise@sijthoff.nl
Enabling children to monitor and maintain their own health
and the health of people close to them constitutes a major
contribution to public health. Such an objective is addressed
by the Children’s International Press Centre, and is based on
an insightful pilot experience in a primary school in
Amsterdam in 2016.
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Can children be involved as young citizens and as agents of their
own positive health as well as of community health – rather than
as ‘target groups’ for interventions imposed from outside and
above – and if yes, how can this be achieved?
Eleven year old girls and boys in the final year of a primary
school (described above) participated actively in the pilot
project. Two methodologies were refined in collaboration with
these young people:
A landscape with quadrants that guided the school children in
seeing the connections between their everyday lives at home and
school and the wider worlds of decision making and specialist
knowledge. This helped them to go through a report on the
health behaviour of school age children, choose a subject that
resonated with them and then approach the Mayor’s office to
follow up.
Encouragement to school children to find adults – in their near
environments and beyond – who could support children in
various ways. The children made a catalogue of these adults and
the particular help each one could offer. One such catalogue
could take the form of Who does what for children’s health?
The findings from the pilot experience were very encouraging.
School children – and their teachers – found that methodol-
ogies such as the ones described above facilitated the making of
connections between their everyday lives and distant corridors
of power and centres of expertise, with reference to major
issues that included those around health. These methodologies
have now also been tried out in secondary schools with
positive results and show promise in international settings.
Key messages:
 Children are able to support their own and other people’s
health, if they can draw on suitable enabling methodologies.
 The Children’s International Press Centre, during its pilot
experience in a primary school in Amsterdam, supported
children in addressing decision makers and health specialists.
Parental gambling is associated with adolescents’
attitude to gambling
Camilla Lion
A Buja1, C Bertoncello1, P Vian2, F Vittadello2, E Simeoni3,
M Sperotto2, G Pieretti4, B Genetti2, C Lion
1
Department of Cardiological, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, University of
Padua, Padua, Italy
2
Explora Center for Research and Statistical Analysis, Padua, Italy
3
Italian Department for Antidrug Policies-Presidency of the Council of
Ministers, Rome, Italy
4
Department of Sociology and Business Law, University Of Bologna,
Bologna, Italy
Contact: camilla.lion86@gmail.com
Background
The links between family influences and adolescent gambling
behavior have not been extensively studied. There is some
preliminary evidence of the family environment and family
relationships being associated with adolescent gambling
behavior. It is important to identify and elucidate the factors
associated with adolescent gambling, including the potential
influence of family behavior.
Methods
A survey was conducted in 2014 on 34,746 students attending
619 secondary schools, a sample that can be considered as
representative of Italian 15- to 19-year-olds. The prevalence of
different categories of gamblers was estimated by age group
and gender. A multivariate logistic regression was applied to
seek the association between youth and parental gambling.
Results
In our sample, 48.2% (47.7-48.7) of the students had experience
of gambling in the previous year. They were classifiable as not at
risk in 41.0% (40.5-41.5) of cases; at risk in 4.1% (3.9-4.3); and
as having a problematic approach to gambling in 3.1% (2.9-3.3).
 158 European Journal of Public Health, Vol. 27, Supplement 3, 2017
Multivariate analysis, adjusted for gender, age, school marks,
parents’ level of education, and money spent a week,
demonstrated that parents’ gambling behavior was associated
with their children’s gambling behavior, and particularly with:
mothers who gambled, OR 1.377 [CI95% 1.281-1.479]; fathers
who gambled, OR 1.938 [CI95% 1.834-2.047]; siblings who
gambled, OR 2.143 [CI95%1.989-2.309]; grandparents who
gambled, OR 1.051 [CI95% 0.980-1.127]; and other relatives
who gambled, OR 1.394 [CI95% 1.322-1.470].
Conclusions
Parental involvement in gambling could reflect parental
approval, which has been associated with a higher likelihood
of gambling among adolescents.
Adolescents are important targets of primary prevention
strategies, but it is essential to include parents too, hopefully
by means of large-scale public awareness campaigns through
mass media, with a view to minimizing the harm caused by
gambling by promoting a responsible behavior on the parents’
part.
Key messages:
 Gambling is common among adolescents. The gambling
behavior of parents and siblings is associated with young
people’s attitude to gambling
 Prevention programs should take a whole-family approach.
Does parental monitoring buffer against alcohol use:
a longitudinal study among Finnish adolescents
Pirjo Lindfors
P Lindfors, J Minkkinen, A Katainen, A Rimpelä
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
Contact: pirjo.lindfors@uta.fi
Background
Adolescent alcohol use constitutes a major public health
concern. Heavy and frequent drinking is associated with
adverse health consequences and low academic achievement.
It has been suggested that parental monitoring may prevent
adolescents’ alcohol use. We examined whether parental
monitoring in the beginning of lower secondary school (age
5.O. Diet across the life course
Perceived child eating behaviours and maternal
migrant Background
Maria Somaraki
M Somaraki1, K Eli2, K Sorjonen3, CE Flodmark4, C Marcus5, MS Faith6,
C Persson Osowski1, A Ek5, P Nowicka5
1
Department of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics, Uppsala University, Uppsala,
Sweden
2
Department of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics, Uppsala University, Oxford,
UK
3
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Solna, Sweden
4
Childhood Obesity Unit, Skåne University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden
5
Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, Karolinska
Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
6 education, and concern about child weight.
Department of Counseling, School, and Educational Psychology, University
of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, United States
Contact: maria.somaraki@ikv.uu.se
Background
The Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ) is a well-
established instrument in the study of obesity-related eating
behaviours among children. However, research using the
CEBQ in multicultural samples is limited. This study aims to
identify and examine differences in child eating behaviours as
reported by Swedish-born and non-Swedish-born mothers
living in Sweden.
Methods
Cross-sectional study in Sweden. Mothers of four-year-olds,
born in 74 countries (n = 1310, 36.5 years, 63.6% with higher
education, 29.2% with overweight or obesity), completed the
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13 years) prevents alcohol use at the end of lower secondary
school (age 16 years), and whether the effect of mother’s and
father’s monitoring was the same on boys and girls.
Methods
A total of 5,742 adolescents answered a Health Survey in 2011
and 2014 in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Adolescents’
alcohol use was measured by three questions: any alcohol use,
frequency of use, and being really drunk. Mother’s and father’s
monitoring was measured separately in the beginning of the
follow-up using Parents’ monitoring scale comprising 5 items,
e.g., how well parents know who their children’s friends are
and their children’s whereabouts after school hours (mother
a = 0.82; father a = 0.89). The data was analyzed separately for
boys and girls by moderation regression modeling using
Bayesian estimation.
Results
Mothers’ and father’s comprehensive monitoring at the age of
13 predicted directly boys’ and girls’ lower alcohol use at the
age of 16 (p < 0.001). Parental monitoring also had moderating
effects on adolescents’ alcohol use three years later among
those boys and girls who did not use alcohol at the age of 13.
For those who did not use alcohol at the age of 13, the alcohol
use was more frequent at the age of 16 if parental monitoring
was looser at the age of 13 (all p < 0.001).
Conclusions
Both mother and father’s monitoring at the age of 13 buffers
against the adverse development of alcohol use at the age of 16
for both boys and girls. Parental monitoring has both direct
and moderating effects. Underlining the importance of
parental monitoring should be part of family health counsel-
ling in school health services.
Key messages:
 Our longitudinal study shows that parental monitoring of
children’s activities can protect adolescents from alcohol
use.
 School health services should stress the meaning of parental
monitoring on adolescents’ drinking behavior in family
health counseling.
CEBQ subscales Food Responsiveness, Emotional Overeating,
Enjoyment of Food, and Desire to Drink, clustering into Food
Approach, and the CEBQ subscales Satiety Responsiveness,
Slowness in Eating, Emotional Undereating, and Food
Fussiness, clustering into Food Avoidance. Data were com-
pared across seven regional groups, divided by maternal place
of birth (Sweden, Nordic/Western Europe, Eastern/Southern
Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, East/South/
Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central/South America).
Crude, partly and fully adjusted linear regression models
controlled for child’s and mother’s weight status, age, mother’s
Results
Food Approach and Food Avoidance behaviours were
associated with maternal migrant background, but associations
for Food Fussiness were limited. Notably, mothers born in the
Middle East and North Africa reported higher frequencies of
Food Approach (e.g. Desire to Drink, b = 0.57, 95% CI: 0.40;
0.74, p < 0.001), except for Enjoyment of Food (b=-0.30, 95%
CI: -0.45; -0.16, p < 0.001), as well as higher frequencies of
Food Avoidance (e.g. Slowness in Eating, b = 0.50, 95% CI:
0.34; 0.67, p < 0.001).
Conclusions
The study highlights the importance of examining how
regionally-specific maternal migrant background affects
mothers’ perceptions of child eating behaviours.