Evaluating a social marketing campaign on healthy nutrition and lifestyle among primary-school children: A mixed-method research design

Italy has one of the highest levels of childhood overweight and obesity in Europe. Therefore, preventing children from becoming overweight is a major public health challenge. Here, we used a mixed-method research approach – including a quasi-experimental design and three surveys – to create a formative evaluation of a social marketing campaign on healthy nutrition and lifestyle in Italian primary school children. The social marketing campaign was organized around the 4 Ps of the marketing mix (product: the educational activities; place: the involved schools and supermarkets; promotion: the in-person and technology-based communication; and price: hours spent by the targeted children in fulfilling the educational activities). The campaign involved primary-school children across four Italian cities. The findings suggest that social marketing education campaigns can be effective tools to improve children’s knowledge about healthy food and lifestyle, reduce their sedentary behavior, and increase their consumption of healthy food. Also, increasing children’s acceptance of healthful nourishment is a valuable tool to improve the dietary habits of the entire family. With relation to the educational program assessment method, this study can inform societal interventions especially those involving children through the integration of different qualitative and quantitative research methods, which collect data from different subjects and perspectives.     

Homelessness as a Lifestyle

For those homeless people who are rejecting traditional social services, one may have to be able to treat their symptoms as secondary while looking beyond them for primary social patterns. This reveals a lifestyle devastated by disaffiliation and social distance. People who have been homeless for a long time can be shown to be suffering from a lifestyle of homelessness or from homelessness-as-a-lifestyle. This is a condition, the components of which often include early life transiency, impulsiveness, clusters of unsolved problems, as well as a lack of social and other supports. These lifestyle elements interact with one another in perpetuating fashion, dragging the person along in an undertow, one result of which is downward mobility. Four case studies demonstrate examples of this social condition.     

中国当代农民生活方式及其对公共政策态度的影响

与城市市民生活方式研究不同，对于占人口绝大多数的农民，他们的生活方式处于相对“被忽略的地位”。基于实地调查的数据，本研究对中国当代农民生活方式及其对公共政策态度的影响进行分析。结果显示：与以往相比，农民的物质生活水平有了很大改善，但社会交往并没有发生实质性的变化，休闲娱乐活动还主要停留在传统层面，具有现代色彩的休闲娱乐活动较少。同时研究发现，在对待国家公共政策的态度上，农民物质生活水平和休娱乐的现代化程度越高，对国家公共政策越趋向给予消极的评价，而农民的社会交往情况对公共政策态度的影响并不明显。     

天津市低碳经济发展路径研究与分析

天津市作为国家低碳城市试点之一,应率先在发展低碳经济实现可持续发展方面探索一条有效途径。本文从影响天津低碳经济因素入手,列举9个天津低碳经济发展关联性因素,运用解释结构模型理顺各关联性因素之间的层级关系,得到关联性因素层次结构图。在此基础上,探讨天津市发展低碳经济的路径研究,认为完善天津市低碳规划体系、提高现代服务业比重、选择低碳经济试点区域和提高居民低碳意识是建设天津低碳城市的重要途径。     

A Comparison of Egg Consumption with Other Modifiable Coronary Heart Disease Lifestyle Risk Factors: A Relative Risk Apportionment Study

Guidelines from the American Heart Association (AHA) recommend that healthy adults limit their intake of dietary cholesterol to less than 300 mg per day. Since a large egg contains about 71% of that amount, the AHA recommends restricting egg consumption unless dietary cholesterol intakes from other sources are limited. We applied a risk apportionment approach to estimate the contribution of egg consumption and other modifiable lifestyle risk factors (e.g., smoking, poor diet, minimal exercise, and alcohol intake) to coronary heart disease (CHD) risk at the population level. Specifically, we categorized the U.S. adult population ages 25+ into distinct risk groups based on the prevalence of modifiable lifestyle risk factors and applied an apportionment model, typically used to assess risk contribution at the individual level, to estimate the contribution of egg intake to CHD risk. Our analysis shows that the combination of modifiable lifestyle risk factors accounts for less than 40% of the population CHD mortality. For the majority of U.S. adults age 25+, consuming one egg a day accounts for <1% of CHD risk. Hence, focusing on decreasing egg intake as an approach to modify CHD risk would be expected to yield minimal results relative to changing other behaviors such as smoking and other dietary habits.     

生态行政视角下的绿色就业研究

随着低碳经济时代的到来,出现了一个全新的研究领域——绿色就业。目前我国各种绿色产业正在迅速增长,使我国拥有创造绿色就业机会的最佳条件,但也存在与绿色就业相关的法律体系不健全等问题。鉴此,要充分发挥政府引导作用,促进绿色就业,是实现＂两型社会＂,建设美丽中国的最佳选择。     

Using reflexivity to explain variations in migration among the highly-skilled

ABSTRACT

Migration literature has traditionally distinguished between different motivations of migration, such as labour, family and newly also lifestyle migration, never fully exploring the background of these motivations. This article suggests that these different motivations may be explained by different modes of reflexivity as distinguished by Margaret Archer. Linking modes of reflexivity with migration motivations addresses two problems in current migration literature. First, it provides for practical application of reflexivity in explaining migration motivations, which has been missing so far. Second, the article advocates using psycho-social approach as opposed to more commonly adapted ethnical or class based explanations in understanding migration behavior, hence avoiding the potential trap of falling into the trap of methodological nationalism or classism. Through the interview with highly-skilled Estonian migrants it is shown that the reasons of migration among highly skilled are versatile and cannot be explained solely by their class background.     

Anti-aging medicine: pitfalls and hopes

Since the beginnings of time humans have searched for a fountain of youth. This has led to many extravagant claims which have been highly profitable for their proponents. This area has become known as anti-aging medicine and has deservedly been frowned upon by the medical establishment. On the other hand, in the last decades dramatic advances in our understanding of the aging process have come from studies in worms, flies and mice. This article reviews some of these advances and places the extravagant claims of anti-aging medicine in perspective. We conclude that a balanced diet of moderate proportions and exercise remain today the only proven fountain of youth.     

Transnational Mobilties in Snowboarding Culture: Travel,Tourism and Lifestyle Migration

Abstract

Drawing upon global ethnographic methods conducted in six countries over seven years, this paper offers the first in-depth examination of the transnational flows and corporeal mobilities in the contemporary physical culture of snowboarding. Focusing on the travel and migration experiences of various groups of snowboarders (that is, tourists, professional athletes and lifestyle sport migrants), and engaging recent work by human geographers, as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s key concepts of field, capital and habitus, this paper reveals fresh insights into the lived transnationalism and global migration of contemporary youth facilitated by the ‘action’, ‘alternative’ or ‘extreme’ sports economy.     

Place and Lifestyle Migration: The Discursive Construction of ‘Glocal’ Place-Identity

Abstract

International lifestyle migration is a rapidly growing worldwide phenomenon. Within Europe, increasingly large numbers of northern Europeans are moving south in search of what they perceive as a better quality of life. The typical representation of this form of migration suggests that it is consumption-led, tourism-related and leisure-based; it is to be located within late modern, global, elitist, borderless and highly mobile social practices. The question arises as to the role of local place in this type of migration process and in the construction of individual and collective social identities. Using data from advertising texts produced by a residential-tourism resort and from indepth interviews with British residents in the Golden Triangle area of the Algarve, Portugal, this article explores the relationships between discourse, identity, g/local place and lifestyle migration.