Skipping breakfast : longitudinal associations with cardiometabolic risk factors in the childhood determinants of adult health study

Background: The long-term effects of skipping breakfast on cardiometabolic health are not well understood.

Objective: The objective was to examine longitudinal associations of breakfast skipping in childhood and adulthood with cardiometabolic risk factors in adulthood.

Design: In 1985, a national sample of 9–15-y-old Australian children reported whether they usually ate breakfast before school. During follow-up in 2004–2006, 2184 participants (26–36 y of age) completed a meal-frequency chart for the previous day. Skipping breakfast was defined as not eating between 0600 and 0900. Participants were classified into 4 groups: skipped breakfast in neither childhood nor adulthood (n = 1359), skipped breakfast only in childhood (n = 224), skipped breakfast only in adulthood (n = 515), and skipped breakfast in both childhood and adulthood (n = 86). Diet quality was assessed, waist circumference was measured, and blood samples were taken after a 12-h fast (n = 1730). Differences in mean waist circumference and blood glucose, insulin, and lipid concentrations were calculated by linear regression.

Results: After adjustment for age, sex, and sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, participants who skipped breakfast in both childhood and adulthood had a larger waist circumference (mean difference: 4.63 cm; 95% CI: 1.72, 7.53 cm) and higher fasting insulin (mean difference: 2.02 mU/L; 95% CI: 0.75, 3.29 mU/L), total cholesterol (mean difference: 0.40 mmol/L; 95% CI: 0.13, 0.68 mmol/L), and LDL cholesterol (mean difference: 0.40 mmol/L; 95% CI: 0.16, 0.64 mmol/L) concentrations than did those who ate breakfast at both time points. Additional adjustments for diet quality and waist circumference attenuated the associations with cardiometabolic variables, but the differences remained significant.

Conclusions: Skipping breakfast over a long period may have detrimental effects on cardiometabolic health. Promoting the benefits of eating breakfast could be a simple and important public health message.

Increasing community capacity to prevent childhood obesity : challenges, lessons learned and results from the Romp & Chomp intervention

Background
Obesity is a major public health issue; however, only limited evidence is available about effective ways to prevent obesity, particularly in early childhood. Romp & Chomp was a community-wide obesity prevention intervention conducted in Geelong Australia with a target group of 12,000 children aged 0-5 years. The intervention had an environmental and capacity building focus and we have recently demonstrated that the prevalence of overweight/obesity was lower in intervention children, post-intervention. Capacity building is defined as the development of knowledge, skills, commitment, structures, systems and leadership to enable effective health promotion and the aim of this study was to determine if the capacity of the Geelong community, represented by key stakeholder organisations, to support healthy eating and physical activity for young children was increased after Romp & Chomp.

Methods
A mixed methods evaluation with three data sources was utilised. 1) Document analysis comprised assessment of the documented formative and intervention activities against a capacity building framework (five domains: Partnerships, Leadership, Resource Allocation, Workforce Development, and Organisational Development); 2) Thematic analysis of key informant interviews (n = 16); and 3) the quantitative Community Capacity Index Survey.

Results
Document analysis showed that the majority of the capacity building activities addressed the Partnerships, Resource Allocation and Organisational Development domains of capacity building, with a lack of activity in the Leadership and Workforce Development domains. The thematic analysis revealed the establishment of sustainable partnerships, use of specialist advice, and integration of activities into ongoing formal training for early childhood workers. Complex issues also emerged from the key informant interviews regarding the challenges of limited funding, high staff turnover, changing governance structures, lack of high level leadership and unclear communication strategies. The Community Capacity Index provided further evidence that the project implementation network achieved a moderate level of capacity.

Conclusions
Romp & Chomp increased the capacity of organisations, settings and services in the Geelong community to support healthy eating and physical activity for young children. Despite this success there are important learnings from this mixed methods evaluation that should inform current and future community-based public health and health promotion initiatives.

Trial Registration Number: ANZCTRN12607000374460

The technological knowledge of early childhood pre-service educators

With the current introduction of new national and state Early Years Frameworks and the increased interest and activity in educating early childhood educators, it was timely to investigate what knowledge, if any, early childhood educators had when it came to design technology. Although not prescriptive around technological understanding, the new Framework highlights children's learning related to "creativity", "exploration", "collaboration", and "problem-solving", in the context of connecting with people and technologies. This small pilot project asked 20 pre-service educators a number of questions designed to elicit both their understanding and their practices relating to technology. Responses were recorded and from those given, it was apparent that the Early childhood educators not only included technological activities in their daily practices with children, but generally had a basic understanding of technology, differentiated from other forms of learning activities.

Lower levels of physical activity in childhood associated with adult depression

Emerging evidence indicates that early life exposures influence adult health outcomes and there is cause to hypothesise a role for physical activity (PA) in childhood as a protective factor in adult depression. This study aimed to investigate the association between self-reported levels of PA in childhood and self-reported depressive illness. Lifetime depression and levels of physical activity (low/high) in childhood (<15 yr) were ascertained by self-report in 2152 adults (20–97 yr) participating in an ongoing epidemiological study in south-eastern Australia. Data were collected between 2000 and 2006. In this sample, 141 women (18.9%) and 169 men (12.0%) reported ever having a depressive episode. Low PA in childhood was associated with an increased risk of reporting depression in adulthood (OR = 1.70, 95%CI = 1.32–2.17, p < 0.001). Adjustment for age, gender and adult PA attenuated the relationship somewhat (OR = 1.35, 95%CI = 1.01–1.78, p = 0.04), however further adjustment for SES or country of birth did not affect this relationship. In this community-based study, lower levels of self-reported PA in childhood were associated with a 35% increase in odds for self-reported depression in adulthood. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that lower levels of PA in childhood may be a risk factor for adult depression.

Current negative mood encourages changes in end-of-life treatment decisions and is associated with false memories

To investigate the effects of mood on people’s end-of-life treatment decisions and their false memories of those decisions, participants took part in two sessions. At Time 1, participants were experimentally induced into positive or negative moods. They decided whether they would want to receive or refuse treatments in a range of hypothetical medical scenarios, such as tube feeding while in a coma. Four weeks later, at Time 2, participants were induced into the same or the opposite mood and made these decisions a second time. They also recalled their previous decisions. Participants in negative moods at Time 2 changed more of their current decisions and falsely remembered more of their previous decisions than participants in positive moods. These findings suggest that people’s current moods influence whether they change their treatment decisions; current decisions in turn bias recall of past decisions

A pathway to enhancing professionalism: building a bridge between TAFE and university early childhood qualifications

It has been argued that a key strategy to improve developmental and educational outcomes for young children is to increase the number of childcare staff with early childhood university degrees (Saracho & Spodek, 2007). In order to upgrade the qualifications of staff, a number of Australian universities provide pathways that enable graduates of early childhood diploma programs to complete a degree. Several impediments, including institutional structures and individual contextual and personal factors, may affect these pathways. Although a range of organisations offer diploma programs, TAFE (Tertiary and Further Education) is a major provider. The aim of the present study was to investigate student transition between early childhood programs in TAFE and university. The research drew on several data sources, including a survey of the perceptions of students at various points of undertaking the transition. The current credit arrangement for TAFE Diploma graduates was found to be satisfactory; however, gaps were identified between the TAFE and university teaching and learning arrangements with regard to curriculum structures, teaching styles and assessment. Graduates of both programs considered that the completion of both awards would have a positive effect on their careers.

Music, in early childhood education : teachers' levels of confidence and happiness

This paper presents the results of a study which investigates early childhood teachers’ levels of confi dence
and happiness in conducting music activities with young children. A sample of 284 in-service and preservice
early childhood teachers in Hong Kong participated in the study. Two new research instruments
entitled Teachers Music Confi dence Scale (TMCS) and Teachers Happiness Scale (THS) were designed for
data collection to answer the research questions. Results showed that early childhood teachers have the
highest and the lowest level of confi dence in singing and composing/improvising respectively. In-service
teachers showed higher confi dence and happiness levels in conducting several musical activities with
young children than pre-service teachers. There was also a statistically signifi cant relationship between
these two variables. Implications for engagement in music are discussed in the paper.