Bellantone, Rocco

Di Pietro, Maria Luisa

Pacifici, Roberta

Ricciardi, Walter

Annali dell'Istituto Superiore di Sanità

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Ann Ist Super Sanità 2015 | Vol. 51, No. 2: 93-95
DOI: 10.4415/ANN_15_02_03
The “SporTello SaluTe Giovani” projecT: 
habiTS, lifeSTyleS, riSk behaviourS of iTalian 
univerSiTy STudenTS and fuTure perSpecTiveS
Edited by Maria Luisa Di Pietro, Rocco Bellantone, Roberta Pacifici and Walter Ricciardi
Preface
Maria Luisa Di Pietro1, Rocco Bellantone2, Roberta Pacifici3 and Walter Ricciardi1
1Istituto di Sanità Pubblica, Sezione di Igiene, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy 
2Facoltà di Medicina e Chirurgia, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy 
3Dipartimento del Farmaco, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy
 “Although health is the greatest of our assets that relate to 
the body it is, however, also the one which we reflect on and 
enjoy the least”
(Descartes, Letter to Chanut, 1649).
INTRODUCTION
There is ample evidence that certain habits, life-
styles and habitual or occasional behaviours have the 
potential of determining direct and/or indirect impact 
on health and on physical and mental wellbeing. For 
example, a healthy diet, regular and appropriate levels 
of physical activity, moderate alcohol consumption, and 
the abstinence from illegal drugs are considered healthy 
lifestyles that can predispose an individual to better 
health conditions. On the other hand, irregular eating 
behaviours, sedentary lifestyle, immoderate habits, and 
early and/or promiscuous sexual activity, are behaviours 
that can determine risks for an individual’s health and 
life.
Risk behaviours can be defined as any activity that 
can cause potential negative consequences to an indi-
vidual’s health and life, even if these consequences are 
to some degree counterbalanced by perceived positive 
consequences [1]. Even though risk behaviours are pres-
ent in all age groups, their presence increases within the 
young adult population. In fact, in the phase of life rang-
ing from 18-30 years of age there are important sources 
of stress that can favour the development of risk behav-
iours [2]. This age group represents the period of time 
in which young adults usually leave their primary social 
context (family, school, etc.) to confront themselves for 
the first time with the working world or with the univer-
sity environment. For many, this involves moving away 
from home and beginning a life “outside the home” that 
must be managed autonomously and that presents new 
requirements and relational dynamics.
Unlike the adolescent period, which has been the ob-
ject of many studies on a international [3] and national 
[4] level, the age range from 18-30 years of age cur-
rently is not adequately studied in Italy. The first steps 
towards identifying targeted and effective preventive 
strategies is to quantify and qualify the incidence of risk 
behaviour and to evaluate the young adults’ awareness 
towards the potential harms deriving from certain hab-
its and lifestyles. The “Sportello Salute Giovani” project 
(“Youth Health Information  Desk”) was created ex-
actly with the intention of studying the lifestyles, habits 
and risk behaviours of Italian university students.
OBJECTIVES AND METHODS 
OF INTERVENTION
The “Sportello Salute Giovani” project (“Youth 
Health Information Desk”) is the result of the collabo-
ration between the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery 
of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Roma 
(Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Rome) and 
the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian National Insti-
tute of Health). The project also involved the faculties 
of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart that are 
located in Milan and Brescia. 
The “Sportello Salute Giovani” project was charac-
terized by three purposes of action: 1) to provide stu-
dents of all the universities of Rome, Milan and Brescia 
medical and psychopedagogic consultations on health 
related issues and on the prevention of risk behaviours; 
2) to direct the students to the appropriate health care 
facilities where they could obtain the diagnosis and 
treatment of any potentially pathological condition; 
3) to collect information on risk behaviour in univer-
sity students across the country, with the aim of subse-
quently assessing the need and feasibility of preventive 
interventions.
Address for correspondence: Maria Luisa Di Pietro, Istituto di Sanità Pubblica, Sezione di Igiene Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Largo F. Vito 1, 
00168 Rome, Italy. E-mail: mldipietro@rm.unicatt.it.
Maria Luisa Di Pietro, Rocco Bellantone, Roberta Pacifici and Walter Ricciardi
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The methods of action were: a) the constitution of a 
counselling centre on the three campuses of the Catho-
lic University of the Sacred Heart (Rome, Milan, Bres-
cia) that welcomed students from all the universities of 
the area; b) the formulation of a questionnaire and its 
distribution to a sample of Italian university students in 
order to collect information on this population.
The project involved five phases: 1. constitution of 
the operational units (Scientific Board, Project Manag-
er, Operators of the counselling centers); 2. activation 
of the counselling centers (that provided counselling, 
prevention services and medical aid); 3. preparation of 
the questionnaire for data collection; 4. administration 
of the questionnaire (data collection); 5. data process-
ing. Making reference to the paper by Chiara de Waure, 
Andrea Poscia, Andrea Virdis, Maria Luisa Di Pietro 
and Walter Ricciardi of this monograph (“Study popula-
tion, questionnaire, data management and sample de-
scription”) for the description of phase 3 and 5, here we 
illustrate the phases 2 and 4.
The three counselling centres that were located on 
the campuses of the Università Cattolica del Sacro 
Cuore located in Rome, Milan and Brescia, opened 
respectively on December 6th 2011, January 25th 2012 
and January 30th 2012. The three centres suspended 
their counselling activities during a summer break that 
went from July 1st to September 30th 2012. The centres 
concluded their activity on March 31st 2013. However, 
the administration of the questionnaires started from 
February 2012 and the data collection continued until 
May 2013. During this time period of time, the three 
counselling centres offered their counselling service for 
16 hours per week.
The counselling centres received a large number of 
requests for advice by students. The problems for which 
the students referred to the centres can be divided 
into the following areas: general medicine; gynecol-
ogy/andrology; allergology; psychiatry; psychological 
counselling (eating disorders, family problems, anxiety, 
obsessive-compulsive disorder, problems in adapting 
to the university environment); counselling on healthy 
lifestyles (nutrition and sport). When necessary, the stu-
dents were redirected to the necessary healthcare facili-
ties in order to obtain the diagnosis and treatment of 
any suspected/detected diseases.
The data was collected through the use of question-
naires, which were self-administered and completely 
anonymous. The distribution of the questionnaires took 
place in the three counselling centres, in the classrooms 
of the three campuses of the Catholic University of the 
Sacred Heart, and in the classrooms of nine other uni-
versities located in the Italian national territory. To en-
sure the highest protection of privacy, the collected data 
was not related to any specific region, city, university or 
faculty.
DISSEMINATION OF THE RESULTS 
This work presents the descriptive data collected 
through the administration of the questionnaire, which 
can be found in the original Italian version in the Ap-
pendix which is available online as Supplementary Ma-
terial at www.iss.it/anna.
The results are presented through seven articles. The 
first article is dedicated to the description of the study 
population, the preparation of the questionnaire, the 
data management and sample description. Five articles 
are dedicated to specific habits, lifestyles and/or risk 
behaviours (nutritional habits in Italian university stu-
dents, physical activity and health promotion in Italian 
university students; risky behaviours among university 
students in Italy; sexual behaviours and preconception 
health in Italian university students; attitudes towards 
learning and technology use in Italian university stu-
dents); one article contains data regarding the health 
and well-being of Italian university students (Italian 
university students’ self-perceived health and satisfac-
tion of life).
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 
FOR THE FUTURE
Health is an asset and an achievement, which de-
pends on individual and social choices. The individual 
and the society: these are the targets of health promo-
tion interventions according to the Ottawa Charter of 
1986.
Promoting health means not only enabling people to 
increase control over, and to improve, their health, to 
identify and to realize their aspirations, to satisfy their 
needs, and to change or cope with the environment, 
but also taking care of − for example − environment, 
food and drug safety, urban planning, and occupational 
health. In this way, the real protagonist of health is the 
human being and the institution must put him/her in 
a position to have the power (empowerment) and the 
knowledge to make choices, ensuring conditions of 
complete physical, mental and relational wellbeing. This 
involves responsibilities both on a community (health, 
social and environmental policies) and personal (of the 
individual, of the group, of the community) level. It is 
then evident that the promotion of health moves also 
from dynamics that are outside of the world of health 
care but that are instead cultural, educational, social, 
economic and environmental. 
The survey conducted within the “Sportello Salute 
Giovani” project (18-30 years) showed a significant 
percentage of unhealthy lifestyles and behaviours that 
determine risks for the health and life of the individual 
and/or of the others. Lifestyles and predispositions to-
wards risk behaviours potentially find their roots in the 
early period of life but might be exacerbated by specific 
circumstances connected to university life. In this light, 
the university environment (institution) may be the 
place in which to promote the health of young students 
(individuals), by creating educational moments and or-
ganizational interventions.
Because they are the result of individual choices, life-
styles and risk behaviours call into account also the mor-
al dimension and responsibility of action. Even though 
there are undoubtedly many situations of vulnerability/
weakness that can influence a choice, it is fundamental 
to acquire awareness of what is bad or good. In this 
context, health education transcends the objective of 
remedy for a risky behaviour and becomes a space for 
the acquisitions of skills: to become aware of one’s own 
Preface
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actions, to develop critical thought, evaluation criteria, 
motivations, and to take actions according to freedom 
and responsibility. Health education thus becomes “the 
art of maieutics” that brings forth (e-ducere) the positive 
elements that can be found in each human being; “the 
pedagogy of freedom” that indicates what can improve 
our health so as to be able to make choices that ame-
liorate our life.
On the other hand, as written by Siebeck, “Plato 
states that virtue comes first and then health and wis-
dom follow, as a god is followed by his cortege. Health, 
in fact, is not a characteristic of the body, but of the 
whole person, so it will be subordinated to what is per-
ceived by the person as the authentic good” [5].
Therefore, looking at the results of the “Sportello Sa-
lute Giovani”, we should conceive in universities edu-
cational interventions aimed to increase the students’ 
understanding and awareness regarding healthy eating 
habits, the preservation of male/female fertility, the con-
sequences of tobacco smoking, alcohol abuse or illegal 
drug use and the risk deriving from an inappropriate use 
of technological devices. To obtain some of these objec-
tives (i.e. prevention of tobacco smoking, alcohol abuse, 
illegal drug use), it is sometimes necessary to enforce 
normative interventions. However, the necessity for 
normative interventions is an evident signal that educa-
tion was not implemented or that it was not adequate 
for the obtainment of the desired objectives.
Since health is not affected only by individual behav-
iour, but also by the environment and the context in 
which the given behaviour takes place, it is necessary to 
promote an organizational model that favours healthy 
lifestyles. For example, to avoid the low consumption of 
fruits and vegetables, we must assure the availability of 
fruit and vegetables (instead of junk food) in the cafete-
ria, bar and vending machines; furthermore, it is neces-
sary to encourage and plan initiatives (gyms in the cam-
pus, conventions with external gyms, presence of fields 
for football, volleyball and tennis) aimed at promoting 
physical activity in university students. Since students 
show a particular interest and inclination to the use of 
technological devices, it would be appropriate to under-
stand how to include and use these tools of communi-
cation in educational programs offered by universities 
and how to make preventive interventions benefit from 
them, paying attenction to avoid their abuse and misuse 
that could be dangerous, especially in terms of altera-
tion in social relationships. 
Finally, it would be necessary to organize a team of 
physicians and psychologists that are ready to aid stu-
dents with acute or chronic conditions since a relevant 
part of them suffers almost every day of one among so-
matic or psychological symptoms. The interesting experi-
ence presented by the “Sportello Salute Giovani” project 
should, therefore, become permanent and represent a 
place where all students can obtain advice, have an op-
portunity to communicate, or request explanations re-
garding issues that can influence their health or lifestyles.
Acknowledgement
The “Sportello Salute Giovani” Project was funded by 
the Istituto Superiore di Sanità.
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The “Sportello Salute Giovani” project: habits, lifestyles, risk behaviours of Italian university students and future perspectives. Preface

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The “Sportello Salute Giovani” project: habits, lifestyles, risk behaviours of Italian university students and future perspectives. Preface

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