Assessment of diet, physical activity and biological, social and environmental factors in a multi-centre European project on diet- and lifestyle-related disorders in children (IDEFICS)

Abstract

Obesity is a major public health problem in developed countries. We present a European project, called Identification and Prevention of Dietary and Lifestyle-induced Health Effects in Children and Infants (IDEFICS), that focuses on diet- and lifestyle-related diseases in children. This paper outlines methodological aspects and means of quality control in IDEFICS. IDEFICS will use a multicentre survey design of a population-based cohort of about 17,000 2- to 10-year-old children in nine European countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Sweden). The project will investigate the impact of dietary factors such as food intake and food preferences, lifestyle factors such as physical activity, psychosocial factors and genetic factors on the development of obesity and other selected diet- and lifestyle-related disorders. An intervention study will be set up in pre-school and primary school settings in eight of the survey centres. Standardised survey instruments will be designed during the first phase of the project and applied in the surveys by all centres. Standard operation procedures (SOPs) will be developed, as well as a plan for training the personnel involved in the surveys. These activities will be accompanied by a quality control strategy that will encompass the evaluation of process and result quality throughout the project. IDEFICS will develop comparable Europe-wide health indicators and instruments for data collection among young children. Establishment of a new European cohort within IDEFICS will provide a unique opportunity to document the development of the obesity epidemic in the current generation of young Europeans and investigate the impact of primary prevention in European children populations

Prevalence and determinants of childhood overweight and obesity in European countries: pooled analysis of the existing surveys within the IDEFICS Consortium

“…4,6 In fact, in the most recently published investigation of such trends, no data were reported for Cyprus, Estonia and Italy, because of the lack of prospective comparable cohorts in these countries. 4 It should be noted that the surveys currently conducted in the framework of the IDEFICS project 8,9 are collecting data on child health in eight European countries, including Cyprus, Estonia and Italy. These new data, compared with those reported in this paper, will contribute to the temporal assessment of overweight/ obesity based on common criteria also in countries not yet considered.…”

“…4,6 The aim of the present study was to pool and analyse, according to standardized criteria and using harmonized variables, the existing databases of surveys on childhood overweight and obesity carried out from 1995 to 2005 in different European countries by research groups participating in the IDEFICS project (http://www.idefics.eu). [8][9] To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to build up a common database from raw dataFcollected in different countries with somewhat different instrumentsFto obtain comparable information not only on 'hard' end points such as the prevalence of overweight/obesity, but also on known determinants of body fat accumulation, such as birthweight, meal frequency, parental education. The results of this analysis could be also useful as starting points to evaluate national trends of overweight/obesity when they will be compared with the data that are currently collected within the IDEFICS study, particularly for those European countries where no data on temporal trends are available.…”

Physical fitness reference standards in European children: the IDEFICS study

“…23,24 Body weight (kg) and height (cm) were measured in barefoot children, clothed in underwear, using an adapted version of electronic scale TANITA BC 420 SMA (Tanita Europe BV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands), precision 100 g, range 0-150 kg and a portable stadiometer (seca 225, seca, Birmingham, UK), precision 0.1 cm, range 70-200 cm, respectively. Body mass index was calculated as body weight (kg) divided by height (m) squared.…”

Determinants of vitamin D status in young children: results from the Belgian arm of the IDEFICS (Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-Induced Health Effects in Children and Infants) Study

“…IDEFICS is a longitudinal study; however, in the present paper only the cross-sectional data collected in 2010 are used. The children were contacted by random cluster sampling (all children from a selection of classes from all schools in the control city) (14)(15)(16) . During the fieldwork period, which ran from February 2010 to June 2010, a venous blood collection was received from 509 children in the Belgian IDEFICS control region.…”