Background
Childrens COOPeration (Child Coop) investigates whether a systems-oriented approach can increase and sustain healthy movement behaviours among children aged 6–12 years, thereby promoting children's health and wellbeing, including healthy weight development, sleep, and mental health.
Health inequalities are also reflected in children's movement behaviours. Children from families with fewer socioeconomic resources are substantially more likely to be sedentary than children from more advantaged families. Promoting health early in life is therefore crucial, as unhealthy behaviours established during childhood can persist into adolescence and adulthood and contribute to the development of chronic diseases.
Systems-oriented, community-based interventions that adopt a co-creation approach represent a promising strategy for promoting and sustaining healthy movement behaviours among children. Such approaches build on resources within local communities and bring together local leaders, civil society organisations, and residents to identify the complex underlying system that may hinder or facilitate healthy movement behaviours among children.
Once this system has been mapped and understood, communities work collaboratively to achieve longer-term system change through locally tailored activities and initiatives designed to create conditions that support healthy movement behaviours.
Read more about the project here.
Aim
Child Coop aims to investigate whether a systems-oriented approach can increase and sustain healthy movement behaviours among children aged 6–12 years and thereby promote children's health and wellbeing, including healthy weight development, sleep, and mental health.
Design
The project applies systems-oriented approaches, including Group Model Building (GMB), in which residents, stakeholders, and municipal staff collaborate to develop a shared understanding of the system underlying complex challenges – in this case, children's movement behaviours.
The process is facilitated through, among other activities, three participatory workshops. These workshops bring together local stakeholders to develop a shared understanding of the factors shaping children's movement behaviours and to identify locally relevant solutions to the complex challenges facing communities today.
The project also applies a range of evaluation approaches to assess both system-level changes and implementation processes, including the IMPAcT process.
To assess the effects of the systems-oriented approach on healthy movement behaviours among approximately 2,000 children aged 6–12 years, the project uses a wait-list controlled design. Children's movement behaviours are assessed before the intervention and after three years. Each participating municipality has identified two local communities: one serves as the intervention community and the other as the control community. Following the three-year evaluation period, the systems-oriented process will subsequently be implemented in the control communities as part of the wait-list design.
Timeline
Child Coop was launched in 2023 and will be completed by the end of 2026.
During 2023 and 2024, the participatory workshops are prepared and conducted. Research activities investigate mechanisms and contextual factors at the system level, as well as the implementation of locally developed activities during 2025 and 2026.
Changes in outcomes at the individual level are assessed through data collected from children at baseline in 2023 and at follow-up in 2026.
Partners
The research project is led by an interdisciplinary research team comprising Steno Diabetes Center Aarhus, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, Aarhus University, and Deakin University.
Local partners include five Danish municipalities: Halsnæs Municipality, Odsherred Municipality, Randers Municipality, Syddjurs Municipality and Vordingborg Municipality
Funding
The project is funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.