Recruiting and engaging adolescents in creating overweight and obesity prevention policies: The CO‐CREATE project

Special Issue: The CO‐CREATE Project: Co‐creating policy with youthThe CO-CREATE project aims to collaborate with adolescents across Europe in developing policy ideas that contribute to overweight and obesity prevention. In this paper, we present the theoretical basis and methodological approach to recruitment and engagement in the project. The principles of youth-led participatory action research were employed to design Youth Alliances in which adolescents and adults could collaborate. These Alliances should serve to promote and support adolescent participation and to develop policy ideas that would contribute to obesity prevention. Alliance members were recruited in two local geographical areas per country with a focus on reaching out to underrepresented youth. We started with fieldwork to assess locally relevant forms of inclusion and exclusion. The methodology entailed a handbook combining existing tools which could be used flexibly, a collaborative organization, and budgets for the alliances. Engagement started in local organizations, that is, schools and scouts, and with peers. Health- and overweight-related challenges were addressed in their immediate surroundings and supported the inclusion of experiential knowledge. Adolescents were then supported to address the wider obesogenic system when designing policy ideas. The CO-CREATE Alliances provide a concrete example of how to engage youth in public health, in a manner that strives to be participatory, transformative, and inquiry based.The “Confronting obesity: Co-creating policy with youth” (CO-CREATE) project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant 774210 (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/774210).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Encouraging greater empowerment for adolescents in consent procedures in social science research and policy projects

The CO-CREATE project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 774210.The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasizes the importance of allowing children and adolescents to influence decisions that are important to them following their age and maturity. This paper explores the principles, practices, and implications around using parental versus child/adolescent consent when participating in social science research and policy development. Experiences from two studies are presented: The Confronting Obesity: Co-creating policy with youth (CO-CREATE) and the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborative Cross-National study. Although parental consent may be an important gatekeeper for protecting children and adolescents from potentially harmful research participation, it may also be considered an obstacle to the empowerment of children and adolescents in case they want to share their views and experiences directly. This paper argues that evaluation of possible harm should be left to ethics committees and that, if no harm related to the research participation processes is identified and the project has a clear perspective on collaborating with the target group, adolescents from the age of 12 years should be granted the legal capacity to give consent to participate in the research project. Collaboration with adolescents in the development of the research project is encouraged.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Dynamics of active droplets and freely-jointed colloidal trimers

In this thesis we have investigated how the dynamics of particle are affected by surface activity, which is the property of particles to locally alter the solute concentration through for example a surface reactions or dissolution. We found that surface activity can have three effects on the particle dynamics. First, it can cause the particles to self-propel. Surprisingly a heterogeneous surface activity is no prerequisite for this and also particles with isotropic surface activity can swim due to a hydrodynamic instability, provided the activity is larger than a threshold value. Particles that move due to this instability are called isotropic swimmers. In Chapter 2 we studied the swimming dynamics of droplet that slowly dissolve in surfactant solution as a model for such isotropic swimmers. We found that their persistence time can be tuned through droplet size and the surfactant concentration. This finding suggests that stochastic character in the motion of active materials on granular length scales is not only caused by Brownian rotation of these active particles. Rather we think that fluctuations in the fluid flow or spatial inhomogeneities in the dissolution rate cause stochastic turning. Second, we found that even below the onset of swimming, the dynamics of particles with homogeneous surface activity are enhanced or attenuated by the activity, depending on whether solute is consumed or produced. In Chapter 3 we investigated theoretically the instability that gives rise to self-propulsion for isotropic particles. We found that particles with a surface activity just below the swimming threshold can coast as if they were inertial, even though they are in the low Reynolds number regime. We made an attempt to test this finding experimentally, but the results remain inconclusive. Third, surface activity induces effective interactions between particles. We measured such solute-mediated interactions between two dissolving oil droplets in Chapter 4 and found that the interaction scales with inter-particle distance as $1/r^2$. Moreover the interaction strength increases with droplet size and surfactant concentration. Because solute-mediated interactions are dissipative and involve the solvent, they can have the unique property that particle 1 is attracted by particle 2, while particle 2 is repelled by particle 1. This asymmetry in solute-mediated interactions can lead to chemotactic chasing, when the interaction strengths are properly tuned, as we show in Chapter 5. We also show that clusters of chasing droplets can move translationally, rotationally or reorganize depending on their geometry. We made a step in the direction of applying the knowledge of the phenomena that we learned for dissolving droplets to solid colloids. The biggest hurdle standing in the way of that comparison is that the phoretic mobility for solid particles is unknown for many solute gradients and not easy to measure experimentally. In Chapter 6 we first reproduced earlier measurements of diffusiophoretic mobilities of solid particles using microfluidic devices. Then we set out to improve this technique so that it requires fewer particles and no longer relies on the particles being fluorescent

Dynamics of active droplets and freely-jointed colloidal trimers

In this thesis we have investigated how the dynamics of particle are affected by surface activity, which is the property of particles to locally alter the solute concentration through for example a surface reactions or dissolution. We found that surface activity can have three effects on the particle dynamics. First, it can cause the particles to self-propel. Surprisingly a heterogeneous surface activity is no prerequisite for this and also particles with isotropic surface activity can swim due to a hydrodynamic instability, provided the activity is larger than a threshold value. Particles that move due to this instability are called isotropic swimmers. In Chapter 2 we studied the swimming dynamics of droplet that slowly dissolve in surfactant solution as a model for such isotropic swimmers. We found that their persistence time can be tuned through droplet size and the surfactant concentration. This finding suggests that stochastic character in the motion of active materials on granular length scales is not only caused by Brownian rotation of these active particles. Rather we think that fluctuations in the fluid flow or spatial inhomogeneities in the dissolution rate cause stochastic turning. Second, we found that even below the onset of swimming, the dynamics of particles with homogeneous surface activity are enhanced or attenuated by the activity, depending on whether solute is consumed or produced. In Chapter 3 we investigated theoretically the instability that gives rise to self-propulsion for isotropic particles. We found that particles with a surface activity just below the swimming threshold can coast as if they were inertial, even though they are in the low Reynolds number regime. We made an attempt to test this finding experimentally, but the results remain inconclusive. Third, surface activity induces effective interactions between particles. We measured such solute-mediated interactions between two dissolving oil droplets in Chapter 4 and found that the interaction scales with inter-particle distance as $1/r^2$. Moreover the interaction strength increases with droplet size and surfactant concentration. Because solute-mediated interactions are dissipative and involve the solvent, they can have the unique property that particle 1 is attracted by particle 2, while particle 2 is repelled by particle 1. This asymmetry in solute-mediated interactions can lead to chemotactic chasing, when the interaction strengths are properly tuned, as we show in Chapter 5. We also show that clusters of chasing droplets can move translationally, rotationally or reorganize depending on their geometry. We made a step in the direction of applying the knowledge of the phenomena that we learned for dissolving droplets to solid colloids. The biggest hurdle standing in the way of that comparison is that the phoretic mobility for solid particles is unknown for many solute gradients and not easy to measure experimentally. In Chapter 6 we first reproduced earlier measurements of diffusiophoretic mobilities of solid particles using microfluidic devices. Then we set out to improve this technique so that it requires fewer particles and no longer relies on the particles being fluorescent

Directing Uphill Strand Displacement with an Engineered Superhelicase

The ability to finely tune reaction rates and binding energies between components has made DNA strand displacement circuits promising candidates to replicate the complex regulatory functions of biological reaction networks. However, these circuits often lack crucial properties, such as signal turnover and the ability to transiently respond to successive input signals that require the continuous input of chemical energy. Here, we introduce a method for providing such energy to strand displacement networks in a controlled fashion: an engineered DNA helicase, Rep-X, that transiently dehybridizes specific DNA complexes, enabling the strands in the complex to participate in downstream hybridization or strand displacement reactions. We demonstrate how this process can direct the formation of specific metastable structures by design and that this dehybridization process can be controlled by DNA strand displacement reactions that effectively protect and deprotect a double-stranded complex from unwinding by Rep-X. These findings can guide the design of active DNA strand displacement regulatory networks, in which sustained dynamical behavior is fueled by helicase-regulated unwinding.</p

Open Online Research: Developing Software and Method for Collaborative Interpretation

Inspired by the potentials of web-based collaboration, in 2014, a group of social scientists, students and information specialists started tinkering with software and methodology for open online collaborative research. The results of their research led to a gathering of academics at the #ethnography Conference Amsterdam 2014, where new material was collected, shared and collaboratively interpreted. Following the conference, they continued to develop software and methodology. In this contribution, we report on the aims, methodology, inspiring examples, caveats and results from testing several prototypes of open online research software. We conclude that open online collaborative interpretation is both feasible and desirable. Dialogue and reflexivity, we hold, are able to transcend separated perspectives and stimulate agreement on a set of distinct interpretations; they simultaneously respect the multiplicity of understandings of social phenomena whilst bringing order into this diversity

Perceptions of Corporal Punishment among Creole and Maroon Professionals and Community Members in Suriname

Child discipline is a vital part of child-rearing in all cultures. The need for child discipline is generally recognised, but considerable debate exists regarding the best methods. Corporal punishment (CP) is a dominant practice in Caribbean cultures. This qualitative study investigated community perceptions of the function, legality and boundaries of CP in child-rearing practices in Suriname, in which CP is defined as hitting a child on their buttocks or extremities using an open hand. Twelve focus group discussions were conducted with adolescent and adult community members from Creole and Maroon backgrounds, as well as with professionals working with children. ATLAS.ti (version 7.5.4), a qualitative data package, was used to conduct the analyses. This study showed how violent forms of disciplining children are widely accepted and practised in Suriname. CP is considered a necessary and respected form of disciplining children, particularly by parents. Participants know about the existence of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that has been ratified in Suriname, but there is a lack of knowledge about its content. Developing appropriate policy responses to violence towards children requires understanding of the perception and use of CP. Such knowledge is needed to tackle the invisibility and social acceptance of violence in child disciplin

Encouraging greater empowerment for adolescents in consent procedures in social science research and policy projects

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasizes the importance of allowing children and adolescents to influence decisions that are important to them following their age and maturity. This paper explores the principles, practices, and implications around using parental versus child/adolescent consent when participating in social science research and policy development. Experiences from two studies are presented: The Confronting Obesity: Co-creating policy with youth (CO-CREATE) and the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborative Cross-National study. Although parental consent may be an important gatekeeper for protecting children and adolescents from potentially harmful research participation, it may also be considered an obstacle to the empowerment of children and adolescents in case they want to share their views and experiences directly. This paper argues that evaluation of possible harm should be left to ethics committees and that, if no harm related to the research participation processes is identified and the project has a clear perspective on collaborating with the target group, adolescents from the age of 12 years should be granted the legal capacity to give consent to participate in the research project. Collaboration with adolescents in the development of the research project is encouraged.</p