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The study is the Danish contribution to the WHO collaborative study, Health Behaviour in Schoolchildren. A nationwide random sample of pupils, 11, 13 and 15 years old (N=4046), answered a standardised questionnaire in 1994 about perceived health, health behaviour, social factors and contact with the school nurse. In the bivariate analysis, significant predictors of a very good health dialogue were: a high degree of satisfaction with life, satisfaction with school, good social integration, high academic achievement, not being isolated from classmates, not feeling pressured due to school work, confidence, suitable body-image, a very good self-rated health, no weekly symptoms, high levels of physical activity and healthy diet. The final model of a multivariate analysis revealed five predictors of a very good health dialogue: students' choice of the content of the health dialogue, satisfaction with school, wellbeing at school, very good self-rated health and high academic achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1953 when the Nordic School of Public Health was founded, the aim of public health programmes was disease prevention more than health promotion. This was not unusual, since at this time health usually was seen as the opposite of disease and illness. However, with the Ottawa Charter of 1986, the World Health Organization made a crucial change to view health not as a goal in itself but as the means to a full life. In this way, health promotion became a first priority and fundamental action for the modern society. This insight eventually reached NHV and in 2002 - 50 years after the foundation - an associate professorship was established with a focus on health promotion. Nevertheless, the concept of health promotion had been integrated with or mentioned in courses run prior to the new post. Subsequently, a wide spectrum of courses in health promotion was introduced, such as 'Empowerment for Child and Adolescent Health Promotion', 'Salutogenesis--from theory to practice' and 'Health, Stress and Coping'. More than half of all doctoral theses undertaken at NHV during these years had health promotion as their theme. As a derivative, the Nordic Health Promotion Research Network (NHPRN) was established in 2007 with bi-annual meetings at NHV., (© 2015 the Nordic Societies of Public Health.)

Objective: to review literature on the physical place of childbirth in Greenland between 1953 and 2001, using a narrative review theory and a content analysis framework, the paper seeks to describe and analyse the change in perinatal health care structure in Greenland., Design: findings were discussed within the framework of Daviss' Logics bringing into account scientific, clinical, personal, cultural and intuitive logics as well as economic, legal and political 'logics' concerning perinatal health care policies., Setting: the literature study concerns the place of birth in Greenland, a self-governing constituency of 57,000 people, the world's largest island and with a predominately Inuit population with its own language and culture. Inuit population with its own language and culture., Findings: the place of birth in Greenland has changed and focus has moved from birth as a personal and community act to birth within the private and political arena. New policies and guidelines for pregnancy and childbearing decisions are seldom negotiated with the women, families and their communities., Conclusions: policy changes have an influence on the social and cultural development of Greenland and it poses a challenge and a counter weight to the political and economic limitations that the government works within. Women and children are vulnerable groups and are directly affected by the changing perinatal health care and policy. It is important that when changing policy, the women and their families are part of the dialogue around change., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The purpose of this study was to analyze how Swedish pediatric diabetes teams perceived and discussed fathers' involvement in the care of their child with type 1 diabetes. It also aimed to discuss how the teams' attitudes towards the fathers' involvement developed during the data collection process. The Constructivist Grounded Theory design was used and data were collected during three repeated focus group discussions with three Swedish pediatric diabetes teams. The core category of the teams' perception of fathers' involvement emerged as: If dad attends, we are happy - if mom doesn't, we become concerned. Initially the teams balanced their perception of fathers' involvement on the mother's role as the primary caregiver. In connection with the teams' directed attention on fathers, in the focus group discussions, the teams' awareness of the importance of fathers increased. As a consequence, the team members began to encourage fathers' engagement in their child's care. We conclude that by increasing the teams' awareness of fathers as a health resource, an active health promotion perspective could be implemented in pediatric diabetes care., (© 2012 Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.)

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore and discuss how fathers involved in caring for a child with type 1 diabetes experienced support from Swedish paediatric diabetes teams (PDTs) in everyday life with their child. Eleven fathers of children with type 1 diabetes, living in Sweden and scoring high on involvement on the Parental Responsibility Questionnaire, participated. Data were collected from January 2011 to August 2011, initially through online focus group discussions in which 6 of 19 invited fathers participated. Due to high attrition, the data collection continued in eight individual interviews. A semi-structured interview guide was used, and the fathers were asked to share experiences of their PDT's support in everyday life with their child. A simultaneous and constant comparison approach to data collection and analysis allowed the core category to emerge: the tension between general recommendations and personal experience. This core category illuminates how the fathers experienced tension between managing their unique everyday life with their child and balancing this to meet their PDT's expectations with regard to blood glucose levels. The core category was supported by two categories: the tension between the fathers'and their PDT's knowledge, whereby fathers reported discrepancies between their PDT's medical knowledge and their own unique knowledge of their child; and the tension between the fathers'and their PDT's goals, whereby the fathers identified differences between the family's and their PDT's goals. As a dimension of the core category, fathers felt trust or distrust in their PDT. We conclude that to achieve high-quality support for children with diabetes and to enhance their health and well-being, involved fathers' knowledge of their unique family situation needs to be integrated into the diabetes treatment., (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)

The incidence of diabetes type 1 in children, the most common metabolic disorder in childhood, increases worldwide, with highest incidence in Scandinavia. Having diabetes means demands in everyday life, and the outcome of the child's treatment highly depends on parents' engagement and involvement. The aim of this study was to explore and describe discourses in health care guidelines for children with diabetes type 1, in Sweden, Norway and Denmark during 2007-2010, with a focus on how parents were positioned. As method a Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis was applied, and a six-stage model was used to perform the analysis. The findings shows a Medical, a Pedagogic and a Public Health discourse embedded in the hegemonic Expert discourse. The Expert discourse positioned parents as dependent on expert knowledge, as recipients of education, as valuable and responsible for their child's health through practicing medical skills. This positioning may place parents on a continuum from being deprived of their own initiatives to being invited to take an active part and could result in feelings of guilt and uncertainty, but also of security and significance. From this study we conclude that guidelines rooted in the Expert discourse may reduce opportunities for parents' voices to be heard and may overlook their knowledge. By broadening the selection of authors of the guidelines to include patients and all professionals in the team, new discourses could emerge and the parents' voice might be more prominent., (© 2011 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences © 2011 Nordic College of Caring Science.)

Aims: This study aims to investigate older people's perceptions of and coping with falls, and what motivates them to join such programmes., Method: We used semi-structured interviews to collect data on 14 individuals (65 years +) who contacted an emergency department because they had fallen. Data were analyzed using a phenomenographic approach that traces older people's perception of the phenomenon of ''falling''., Results: Five categories and 15 subcategories emerged from the interviews. The five main categories were: emotional perceptions of falling; falling has consequences; coping with the situation; support from the social network; motivation and demotivation. To fall was shameful and embarrassing and could be explained by old age. To some, ''fear of falling'' was the dominant feeling. These people did not see falls as a risk factor they ought to care about. Instead, to prevent future falls, they restricted their activities or stopped certain activities altogether. If demands exceeded their resources, they asked their relatives or their general practitioner for help. Elderly people were motivated by autonomy, competence, and relatedness and preferred activities that spread happiness and joy, preferably in a social atmosphere, but they encountered elements in their surroundings that curbed their motivation., Conclusions: Future fall-prevention programmes must target older people's needs and acknowledge that there are many ways of perceiving falling. Moreover, elderly individuals' coping strategies are not necessarily productive. Social networks and general practitioners can actively encourage older people to participate in fall-prevention programmes. Such programmes must support older people's need for autonomy, competence and social relations.

Objectives: The aim of this study is to explore the intake of fruit and sweets in Greenlandic schoolchildren aged 11, 13 and 15 years in villages, towns and the capital by cross-sectional data collected in 4 comparative surveys from 1994 to 2006. Study design. Repeated cross-sectional study., Methods: Data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children survey, with responses from 1,302 students in 1994, 1,648 in 1998, 891 in 2002 and 1,366 in 2006, each in the age groups of 11, 13 and 15 years., Results: From 1994 to 2006, the odds ratio for eating fruit daily showed a decline while odds for never eating fruit increased in children living in all types of habitations. For all survey years the intake of fruit was lowest in villages and in 2006 only about 15-20% of village children consumed fruit every day. No general trends were found in the daily intake of sweets or for never eating sweets. Only 6% or less of the respondents never ate sweets. Minor age group and gender differences were seen. For sweets, children in the capital in 2006 had a lower daily use than village children., Conclusion: Greenland is in the process of nutritional transition. The increase in the proportion of schoolchildren that do not meet the national recommendations for daily fruit consumption and the failure to reduce children's intake of sweets is worrying. The intake of fruit was, for all years, lowest in the villages and was probably related (among other things) to cost and access. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Background: Medicine use among children and young people is under-researched. Studies that investigated cross-national patterns in adolescents' medicine use practice are rare. This study aims to investigate adolescents' medicine use for corresponding health complaints in Europe and USA., Methods: Nationally representative samples of adolescents from 19 countries and regions in Europe and USA completed an anonymous, standardised questionnaire as part of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children 2005/2006 survey. The prevalence of health complaints and medicine use were determined. The influence of the frequency of medicine use, age, gender and country of residence, on the likelihood of medicine use was assessed using multilevel multivariate logistic regression, with separate analyses for boys and girls., Results: Both health complaints and medicine use were common among adolescents. Medicine use was strongly associated with the frequency of health complaints. The prevalence of both medicine use and health complaints was higher among girls than boys. Boys and girls with weekly health complaints were both similarly likely to report elevated rates of medicine use., Conclusions: The findings indicated that adolescents who report more frequent recurrent health complaints are also more likely to report more frequent medicine use for their health complaints. Adolescent boys with weekly health complaints have the same risk of medicine use as girls with weekly health complaints. The importance of educating school-aged children to interpret their bodily feelings and complaints and to use medicines appropriately is of high priority., (Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that referral practices along with midwifery care are a means of heightening the quality of perinatal care and lessening perinatal mortality and morbidity. In 2002, in response to high perinatal mortality and morbidity, a referral system was instituted nationally in Greenland, transferring all at-risk pregnancies to its national referral hospital. Little or no current research has focused on evaluation of the perinatal referral system or on the thoughts, beliefs, opinions and challenges faced by women and Greenlandic families themselves. The aim of this paper is to document how women referred to Nuuk because of at-risk pregnancies narratively constructed self-understanding and defined meaning during their period of separation from family and community; and how they dealt with the challenges they were presented with. Interviews were conducted with women upon their arrival at the national referral hospital and during fieldwork over a one-year period. Narrative framework was used for analysis. Coping theory and narrative theories were the theoretical base for structuring the narratives. Through their narratives, women presented their identities as mothers, community members and caretakers. Acceptance of referral was described as a means of protecting their unborn child and was where women found an inner source of strength to deal with their own anger, joy, anxiety and loneliness. The ability to accept referral was directly connected to their family and community and the support they found therein.

Background: Parents and children joint activities are considered to be an important factor on healthy lifestyle development throughout adolescence. This study is a part of the Cross-National Survey on Health Behaviour in School-aged Children--World Health Organization Collaborative Study (HBSC). It aims to describe family time in joint activities and to clarify the role of social and structural family profile in a cross-national perspective., Methods: The research was carried out according to the methodology of the HBSC study using the anonymous standardized questionnaire. In total, 17,761 students (8,649 boys and 9,112 girls) aged 13 and 15 years from 6 European countries (Czech Republic, Finland, Greenland, Lithuania, Spain, and Ukraine) were surveyed in the 2001-2002 school-year. The evaluation of joint family activity is based on 8 items: (1) watching TV or a video, (2) playing indoor games, (3) eating meals, (4) going for a walk, (5) going places, (6) visiting friends or relatives, (7) playing sports, (8) sitting and talking about things (chatting)., Results: Students from Spain and Ukraine reported spending the most time together with their families in almost all kinds of joint activities, whereas students from Greenland and Finland reported spending the least of this time. Boys were more likely than girls to be spending time together with family. Joint family activity goes into decline in age from 13 to 15 years. Variability of family time in a cross-national perspective was relatively small and related to children age category. Considering national, gender and age differences of studied population groups, we found that the distribution of joint family activities tends to be dispersed significantly by family structure (intact/restructured family) and family wealth., Conclusion: Our study compares children and parent joint activities in European countries and reveals differences and similarities in these patterns between countries. The findings underline the role of family structure (intact/restructured family) and family wealth in the distribution of time spent in joint family activities, which should be considered by health promoters.

Introduction and Purpose: School health services is an important element in many countries' health promotion activities but little is known about the pupils' acceptance and perception of these services and their effects. The objective of this paper was to examine the pupils' self-reported outcome of the health dialogue and to examine the effect of social class on this response controlled for the effect of other relevant social factors., Material and Methods: The study is a survey. The population were all pupils in the fifth, seventh and ninth grade (11, 13 and 15 years old) in a random sample of schools in Denmark, response rate 87%, n = 5205. Data were collected by questionnaires., Results: The majority of the pupils had reflected about the content of the last health dialogue with the school health nurse (54%), had discussed the content with their mother (62%) and with friends (54%); 62% had followed the nurse's advice, 77% had made their own autonomous decisions based on the health dialogue, and 11% had returned to the nurse for further advice. Pupils from the lower social classes had more often followed the nurse's advice (OR = 1.16, 95% CI: 0.99-1.37) and returned to the nurse (OR = 1.46, 95% CI: 1.12-1.90). Pupils from the middle and lower social classes had more often made their own autonomous decisions (middle social classes: OR =1.23, 95% CI: 1.08-1.39, lower social classes: OR = 1.13, 95% CI: 0.95-1.34)., Conclusion: Most pupils reported an outcome of the health dialogue with the school health nurse. Pupils from lower social classes seemed to benefit more than pupils from higher social classes.

This study describes and analyses the health dialogue on the basis of the pupils' experience and the association with background factors such as age, sex, geographical areas, family and social class. The theoretical framework is based on empowerment and health promotion, and on Kolb's theory of experiential learning. The study, conducted in 1991, is the Danish contribution to the WHO collaborative study 'Health Behaviour in School Children'. A nationwide random sample of pupils aged 11, 13 and 15 (n = 1860) answered a standardized questionnaire about perceived health, health behaviour, social situation and the health dialogue with the school health nurse. Among the pupils, 68% had participated in the annual health dialogue at the time of the survey (three quarters of the way through the school year). The youngest pupils, and the girls, often participated in groups and reported the greatest number of topics discussed. The health dialogue most frequently comprised 11-20 topics. Most topics discussed were related to health promotion, 31%-60% were related to prevention of illness and symptoms and the rest were related to psychosocial issues. Girls more often reported discussing personal relationships and boys more often discussed action-related topics. Pupils from lower social classes more frequently reported topics related to prevention of illness and symptoms and psychosocial issues. The discussions are the first step in a learning process as a Concrete Experience (CE).