Youth involvement in policy processes in public health, education, and social work: Protocol for a scoping review.

The objective of this scoping review is to understand the extent and impact of youth involvement in policy processes within public health, education, and social work. Youth involvement in policy processes may enhance the relevance of policies and strengthen democratic practices. This scoping review aims to explore the nature, extent, and impact of youth involvement in policy processes in public health, education, and social work, with a focus on health, well-being, and obesity prevention. Empirical studies published from 1989 and evaluating involvement of youth aged 10 to 19 years old from all socioeconomic backgrounds and countries. Studies will be searched in seven databases. Data will be extracted and synthesized narratively by rights-based perspectives on youth involvement, practical processes of the involvement, and social experiences using descriptive statistics and visuals.

The development of the NOURISHING and MOVING benchmarking tools to monitor and evaluate national governments' nutrition and physical activity policies to address obesity in the European region.

Despite assurances of government action, the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and overweight and obesity is continuing to grow at an alarming rate both globally and in Europe. The NOURISHING and MOVING policy frameworks outline a comprehensive set of policy actions across 6 domains and 16 policy areas in which national governments should take action to promote healthy diets and physical activity. Monitoring and benchmarking these policies is important for assessing progress on obesity and NCD prevention. This paper describes the participatory process for developing benchmarking tools structured around the policy areas of the NOURISHING and MOVING policy frameworks. They consist of a set of indicators and policy attributes that assess government support in promoting healthy nutrition and physical activity. They are adolescent relevant as they capture policy actions that target or impact adolescents. The benchmarking tools are designed to monitor progress on national government action on nutrition and physical activity based on aspirational standards. They will be applied in 27 European countries initially and are aimed at policymakers, researchers, and civil society, to track progress, develop the research infrastructure on effectiveness of NCD prevention policies at population level, and support advocacy efforts.

Pilot test of the NOURISHING policy index-Assessing governmental nutrition policies in five European countries.

The NOURISHING database is a repository of more than 1000 verified nutrition and diet-related governmental policy actions currently in effect globally. The database is a unique and rich data source on governmental policy actions with a potential for developing tools that capture the overall policy efforts in a country, identify policy gaps, and enable cross-national comparisons. Policy actions from a sample of five European countries have been benchmarked against aspirational standards using the NOURISHING benchmarking tool. This paper presents the results of the pilot testing from the benchmarking process for the construction of the NOURISHING policy index. The development of the index was guided by existing tools for developing composite indicators. The findings from the pilot test indicate that the NOURISHING policy index can identify both policy gaps and cross-national policy differences. These results demonstrate that the policy index merits testing on a larger sample to identify potential refinements.