Entwicklung eines settingspezifischen Gesundheitsförderprogramms durch die Verwendung des Intervention-Mapping-Ansatzes: „Komm mit in das gesunde Boot – Kindergarten“

Abstract

Background: In Germany, the prevalence of overweight and obese people has increased significantly in the last decades. Intervention strategies for health promotion have to start early, since most health behaviours develop during childhood. Therefore, the kindergarten setting is ideal for health promotion because children can be reached at a young age independent of their socio-economic background. A promising protocol for the development of theory-based interventions is Bartholomew’s intervention mapping (IM), which offers a target group a specific needs assessment and a framework for theory-based intervention planning with regards to a certain setting. Research Question: What are the individual steps and tasks to develop the programme “Join the Healthy Boat – Kindergarten” and how is the intervention programme, which was developed based on IM, designed? Results: Four aims were formulated on the basis of the needs assessment: “More physical activity”, “Less time with screen media”, “Reduction of sugar-sweetened beverages”, and a “Higher fruit and vegetable intake”. The intervention is teacher-based. The underlying concepts of the intervention are Bandura’s social-cognitive theory and Bronfenbrenner’s socio-ecological approach. Materials are available for 20 exercise units and 15 teaching units each on “Physical activity and leisure time” as well as “Nutrition”. In addition, there are short activity breaks for daily use. Action-orientated materials for parental involvement are offered in three languages. During the first year, 512 kindergartens implemented the programme. The aim is to recruit 50 kindergartens and 1000 children in order to evaluate the programme’s effectiveness. Discussion: The use of the structured protocol of IM enables a constant focus on target group and intervention setting at each step of the development. It is advisable to use IM for setting-specific intervention planning, however, a time-consuming and labour-intensive development phase has to be considered.