At the Assistant Professorship of Public Health and Prevention headed by Prof. Dr. Michael Laxy, two new projects have started, which deal with the health behavior and health of adolescents in Africa. In total, the two studies will examine a total cohort of 15,000 to 20,000 adolescents and evaluate various interventions and policy measures.
The project "Research network for Design and evaluation of Adolescent health interventions and policies in Sub-Saharan Africa", in short "DASH", will identify and analyze the most important health risk factors and intervention needs of adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, the effects of newly developed, context-appropriate health interventions as well as existing policies for adolescents will be evaluated.
The study "Reducing Nutrition-related Noncommunicable Diseases in Adolescence and Youth: Interventions and Policies to Boost Nutrition Fluency and Diet Quality in Africa," or "NUTRINT," will survey key nutrition-related risk factors among adolescents and youth in Africa. Furthermore, newly developed interventions to promote nutrition literacy among adolescents will be tested and the impact of a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages will be evaluated. Based on this, the long-term effects and cost-effectiveness of the measures will then be evaluated and classified.
The "DASH" project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the "Research Networks for Health Innovations in Sub-Saharan Africa" (RHISSA) and runs until March 2028. The "NUTRINT" project is funded by the EU's Horizon Europe research and innovation funding program and runs until the end of 2026. TUM's funding share is 1.1 million euros (DASH) and 200,000 euros (NUTRINT).
"DASH"
On the basis of the "DASH" project, the research infrastructure and evidence base on the topic of adolescent health in Africa will be strengthened considerably. "There is fundamentally little data on adolescents in Africa," explains Dr. Jacob Burns, a Research Associate at the Assistant Professorship of Public Health and Prevention. "The data that are available are often not generalizable to the population. Therefore, we want to collect longitudinally detailed data on the health and health behavior of a total of 14,000 adolescents in seven African countries (Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda)."
The aim is to analyze where interventions can be used to achieve improvements in health: "It is particularly important to us to develop the interventions together with the young people and all stakeholders. For example, we are thinking about general topics such as health literacy," says Prof. Laxy.
"We also want to do intervention research in this project," adds Dr. Burns. "This will involve developing interventions in the three domains of nutrition and physical activity, sexual health, and violence and mental health, which will then be implemented and evaluated using a randomized trial." Mixed-method approaches, or qualitative methods, will then be used to examine other indicators to identify problems with implementation. "The focus of our work in the study is particularly on evaluating the effectiveness, feasibility as well as acceptability of the interventions," Dr. Burns said.
"NUTRINT"
"NUTRINT" aims to improve understanding of risks and intervention opportunities related to nutrition and physical activity among adolescents in Africa. "The intervention is therefore specifically focused on nutrition," Dr. Burns explains. As part of the study, supplementation of vitamins or iron, for example, is also conceivable if the adolescents are malnourished.
"In many of these countries, the problem of malnutrition still exists. In urbanized areas, however, similar problems now often exist as here in Central Europe. One aspect is that the consumption of sugary soft drinks is very high. In South Africa and Nigeria, taxation of sweet drinks has therefore already been introduced. Such measures can potentially have an important impact at the population level, which is why this will also be a research focus in the NUTRINT project," explains Prof. Laxy.
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Contact:
Prof. Dr. Michael Laxy
Assistant Professorship of Public Health and Prevention
Georg-Brauchle-Ring 60/62
80992 München
phone: 089 289 24977
e-mail: michael.laxy(at)tum.de
Dr. Jacob Burns
Assistant Professorship of Public Health and Prevention
Georg-Brauchle-Ring 60/62
80992 München
phone: 089 289 24980
e-mail: jacob.burns(at)tum.de
Text: Romy Schwaiger
Photos: African Academy of Public Health/BMBF/Nathan Nadler-Nir/Prof. Dr. Michael Laxy