“NUTRITIONAL SURVEILLANCE OF ADOLESCENTS”
Working Group: Francesca de Blasio, Marika Dello Russo, Gaetana Paolella, Domenico Rendina, Alice Rosi and Garden Tabacchi; The group includes also Prof. Pasquale Strazzullo and Prof. Luca Scalfi, SINU experts from University area and Dr. Giulia Cairella and Dr. Francesca Garbagnati SINU experts from the Public Health area.
Coordinator of the working group: Dr.ssa Giulia Cairella
Within the research project “Health promotion in the third millennium: facebook, social gaming and promotion of healthy lifestyles among adolescents“, promoted by Agenas and funded by the Ministry of Health, the “Nutritional Surveillance of Adolescents” Working Group started in 2016 with the following objectives:
- to describe current eating patterns in adolescents
- to carry out a critical analysis of methods and procedures for assessing nutritional status in teenagers
- to carry out a review of surveillance questionnaires and other data collection systems concerning diet, obesogenic environment and lifestyles in adolescents
- to select questionnaires for food and the obesogenic environment, carrying out a critical review and comparative analysis about their applicability in Italy and consistency within the objectives of the National Prevention Plan (PNP) 2014-2018
The work was organized according to the following steps:
Area 1: systematic review of the literature concerning food patterns: it responds to objective 1 of the project and has included the review of scientific literature of the last 10 years concerning fruit, vegetable and pulses intake, salt consumption and adherence to the Mediterranean Diet during adolescence.
Area 2: selection and critical analysis of methods and procedures to define the nutritional status in the nutritional surveillance systems: it responds to the objectives 2 and 3 of the project and includes the description of the main surveillance systems and other sources of nutritional data about adolescents, both internationally and nationally.
Area 3: systematic review of the literature concerning questionnaires, interviews and other data collection systems about: a) total diet and partial aspects of the diet; b) consumption of salt; c) obesogenic environment; d) Internet addiction: it responds to objectives 3 and 4 of the project and includes the review of the scientific literature of the last 10 years about short questionnaires, screening tools (screeners), interviews and SFQs (short food questionnaires) for the issues related to the object of the research.
The research project was conducted in accordance with the priorities of the PNP 2014-2018 regarding surveillance, diet and lifestyles and produced the Document “Questionnaires for Nutritional Surveillance of Adolescents” focused on: a) Systematic reviews on food patterns (consumption of fruit, vegetables and pulses, consumption of salt and adherence to the Mediterranean Diet) and nutritional surveillance systems. b) catalog about questionnaires for teenagers which collects 45 questionnaires on total diet and partial aspects of the diet, salt intake, obesogenic environment and Internet addiction. The catalog is associated with a systematic analysis conducted and provided the documents for each questionnaire (check list, keywords, abstract, descriptive sheet, questionnaire translation).
The catalog about questionnaires for adolescents describes the tools in detail and translates the questionnaires selected; this is an absolutely original document and not yet available in Italy which offers to the healthcare workers a practical catalog of validated and / or reproducible questionnaires for nutrition assessments in adolescents to be used.
The report “Questionnaires for Nutritional Surveillance of Adolescents” is the final product of the current research project “Health promotion in the third millennium: Facebook, social gaming and promotion of healthy lifestyles among adolescents” promoted by AGENAS with the collaboration of the Italian Society of Human Nutrition (SINU), aimed at evaluating lifestyles, especially nutrition, and the impact of new media on adolescents.