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

Abstract

Summary The 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.

What policies are there and what policies are missing? A Photovoice study of adolescents' perspectives on obesity‐prevention policies in their local environment

“…4 "The confronting obesityco-creating policy with youth (CO-CREATE)" project aimed to provide insights into obesity prevention policies by combining the perspectives of adolescents, scientists, and stakeholders into jointly proposed policy ideas. 5,19 Adolescents and the local CO-CREATE staff formed three groups called Youth Alliances for Childhood Obesity Prevention. Youth Alliances in CO-CREATE aimed to: (1) promote and support adolescent political participation and empowerment, as well as (2) develop context-specific research-based and experienceinformed policy ideas that would have the potential to better their complex environments through overweight and obesity prevention.…”

“…As part of the CO-CREATE research project, adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18 were involved in creating novel and contextspecific public policy proposals to tackle the issue of overweight and obesity (for details, see Bröer et al and Klepp et al 5,19 ). The data gathered for this project included photos and captions submitted by Polish adolescents who were part of the CO-CREATE Youth Alliances.…”

Adolescents' capacity to take action on obesity: A concurrent controlled before‐and‐after study of the European CO‐CREATE project

“…7 The underlying hypothesis was that participation in the Youth Alliances would lead to a change in the participants' readiness for action, and a shift in their attitudes toward obesity as an issue of individual-level drivers and responsibility to a systemic challenge. 7 Youth Alliance members were invited to complete the CO-CREATE process evaluation questionnaire prior to their first Alliance meeting (baseline evaluation) and thereafter on a monthly basis (interim evaluations) until the end of the Alliance activities (postinitiative evaluation). Completion of the Alliances were mainly between June 2020 and July 2020, with one Alliance ending in October 2020.…”

“…Hence, programs that aim to prevent obesity should also address attitudes toward obesity and preventive measures, 16 shifting the thinking of the issue from being solely an individual responsibility to being seen as a systemic political issue. 1,7 A promising approach is the involvement of adolescents in policy research through youth-led participatory action research (YPAR), a form of participatory action research (PAR). 11,12 PAR is "a cooperative, iterative process of research and action in which nonprofessional community members are trained as researchers and change agents, and power over decisions is shared among the partners in the collaboration."…”

“…7 In the present study, we investigated self-reported readiness for action and attitudes toward obesity and preventive measures in a sample of European adolescents participating in the CO-CREATE Youth Alliances. 7,31 Specifically, we explored whether completing the Alliance activities changed the adolescents' reported readiness for action and their attitudes toward obesity and preventive measures.…”