Abstracts

Ollivier Prigent, Aurélia Bureau, Olivier Aromatario, and Linda Cambon

Background: In France, the health service for students in health professions (SSES in its French acronym) is a 2018 health promotion (HP) outreach program for students in health profession. It includes time spent training and acting on various populations. It has been rolled out on French territory without prior assessment. The study we conducted aims to i) document the perception and degree of appropriation of the objectives of the SSES by the stakeholders (students and supervising professionals), ii) analyze the interventions carried out by the students in relation to good HP practices.

Methods: This was a qualitative case study conducted in two academies in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, Poitiers and Bordeaux. Interviews were conducted with stakeholders, as well as observations of actions taken by students.

Results: We conducted 87 interviews and 18 observations. The data obtained show that: (i) even if the stakeholders were strongly involved, conditions for implementation were difficult and unequal, (ii) the objectives are out of step with the prevention issues in the healthcare system, (iii) the students endorsed a mistaken vision of rational HP which individualize health-related behaviors, and (iv) majority of the actions carried out contravene the HP quality criteria, whether postural, methodological, or ethical.

Conclusion: These results were confirmed by the Academy of Normandy. To our knowledge, no other evaluation of this type has been carried out on French territory. This raises questions because the impacts observed seem sufficiently worrying to call for a reform of the system, both in terms of objectives and support for action in HP (e.g. on the social determinants of health).

Keywords: health service, students, health professions, prevention, health promotion (Global Health Promotion, 2022; 29(2): 107–115)

Abelardo Ávila Curiel, Carlos Galindo Gómez, Liliana Juárez Martínez, Armando García-Guerra, Marti Yareli Del Monte Vega, Jesús Martínez Domínguez and Marco Antonio Ávila Arcos

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of poor nutrition (overweight or obesity and short stature) in the Mexican population of six- to twelve-year-olds in primary school, and its association with geographic characteristics (environment, marginalization, and region of the country) and school characteristics (type, shift/hours of study, and grade).

Methods: With information from 10,528,676 students, we estimated (C.I. 95%), at the national level and by characteristics of interest, prevalence and its association using logistic regression models.

Results: The national prevalence of overweight or obesity was 34.4%, with 36.5% in the urban environment and 40.2% in private schools. The national prevalence of short stature was 8.7%, with 13.7% in rural areas and 28.8% in indigenous schools. Overweight or obesity and short stature were significantly associated with geographic and school characteristics.

Conclusions: There is a nutritional polarization in the country’s educational context. It is important to continue systems of nutritional monitoring and surveillance.

Keywords: students, overweight, obesity, Mexico, nutritional surveillance. (Global Health Promotion, 2022; 29(2): 126–135)

Desirée Valera-Gran, Daniel Prieto-Botella, Miriam Hurtado-Pomares, Sergio Hernández-Sánchez, Manoli Garcia-de-la-Hera, Eva María Navarrete-Muñoz and María Teresa Pérez-Vazquez

Summary: Participatory processes allow a community to analyze, comprehend, debate, and promote collective action in matters of significance for the community. These active methodologies favor the identification of health needs and assets to create a community health diagnosis to promote collective actions. In this sense, the application of participatory processes in the university context stems from great interest in strengthening universities as health-promoting communities. In this work, we describe the development of the participatory process #beUMHealthy, whose principal objective was to strengthen the debate over health and health-promotion initiatives in the student body of Miguel Hernández University (UMH). This project was developed between May and November of 2019. Twenty-two participants were recruited using WhatsApp and 173 questionnaires were filled out online. This process allowed for the identification of health needs and assets in the student body of UMH as well as generating ideas for improvement. This information will be used to promote future actions to increase the health of the university community.

Keywords: participatory process, community health, health assets, health promotion, students, university. (Global Health Promotion, 2022; 29(2): 136–140)