For Professor of Epidemiology\u00a0William Pickett and his colleagues, improving children\u2019s health in North America and Europe is work decades in the making.<\/p>\n
For the past 20 years, Pickett has co-led the Canadian portion of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC)<\/a> study, an ongoing World Health Organization survey conducted every four years that measures the well-being, health behaviours and social contexts of young people 11 to 15 years old.<\/p>\n Pickett, Health Sciences PhD student Valerie Pagnotta (BSc \u201921, MSc \u201923) and researchers from across Canada and Europe recently conducted a cross-national study<\/a> of trends in youth injuries in 31 European countries.<\/p>\n Drawing on more than 20 years of HBSC data on almost one million adolescents, Pickett says the team showed that persistent physical injuries arising from sport and other activities as well as risky behaviours such as fighting and cannabis misuse \u201cremain leading public health priorities globally.\u201d<\/p>\n Published in the European Journal of Public Health<\/em>, the paper calls for adolescent injuries to be made a public health priority across Europe.<\/p>\n The study adds to a growing body of child and youth well-being research at Brock, creating what Pickett says is a critical mass for charting health outcomes of Canadian and European youth over time.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat’s really important is this opportunity, and the powerful ability, we have at Brock to study what helps and hinders youth well-being, their causes and consequences in such a robust manner, providing national and international leadership in this line of research,\u201d says Pickett.<\/p>\n He works closely with Associate Professor of Health Sciences Karen Patte, for example, who co-leads the long-running COMPASS<\/a> national health survey of more than 100,000 secondary school students in six provinces each year.<\/p>\n As Canada Research Chair in Child Health Equity and Inclusion<\/a>, Patte is aiming to set up a national Brock-based collaborative consortium to advance child health equity research.<\/p>\n Pickett says Brock\u2019s leadership in long-running studies such as HBSC and COMPASS provide a rich data bank that is put to use in a number of ways.<\/p>\n \u201cThe World Health Organization and like international bodies use the information for reporting purposes,\u201d says Pickett. \u201cFor example, the data forms the basis of UNICEF report cards evaluating child and youth wellbeing in countries based on key indicators.\u201d<\/p>\n Pickett and his HBSC Canada researchers have formed a partnership with the Pan-Canadian Joint Consortium for School Health, a collection of ministries of education and health from across Canada.<\/p>\n The Consortium uses the HBSC data for priority setting, for curriculum design in their education system, Pickett says.<\/p>\n Similarly, the COMPASS study is used by key decision makers at the federal, provincial and school levels, \u201cwhile also providing locally relevant data to schools and communities\u201d Patte says. The study has many partners, including the Public Health Agency of Canada, Public Health Ontario and the Ontario Physical and Health Education Association.<\/p>\n \u201cOne factor that sets COMPASS apart is the longitudinal design, meaning we can follow individual students as they progress from Grades 7 to 12,\u201d she says, \u201cThis design is necessary to evaluate the impact of new policies and programs on youth health over time.\u201d<\/p>\n Other studies arising out of HBSC and COMPASS include the impact of social media on adolescent eating habits<\/a>, trends in adolescent violence<\/a>, the connection between lack of sleep and child injuries<\/a>, the role of spirituality in children\u2019s mental health<\/a> and a call for later start times for secondary schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n A number of Faculty of Applied Health Sciences researchers \u2014 such as Professor of Health Sciences Terrance Wade, Associate Professor of Health Sciences Valerie Michaelson, Assistant Professor of Health Sciences Michelle Vine and postdoctoral scholar Katelyn Battista \u2014 use data from HBSC and COMPASS for their own, specialized studies, says Pickett.<\/p>\n The HBSC and COMPASS studies have also provided excellent training opportunities for hundreds of graduate and postdoctoral researchers for future research and career opportunities, says Pickett.<\/p>\n Funding sources for research under these two larger studies include the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Public Health Agency of Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For Professor of Epidemiology\u00a0William Pickett and his colleagues, improving children\u2019s health in North America and Europe is work decades in the making.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":111064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[119,36,1,5],"tags":[423,2194,1696,7488,7310,3923,9764,489],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111057"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111066,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111057\/revisions\/111066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}