This workshop was aimed at PhD students and Early Career Researchers who are interested in following a research pathway (postdoctoral, fellow, research officer etc.). During the workshop, we heard from senior academics about their expectations of staff and experiences with managing research staff. In addition, we heard from mid- and early-career researchers about their experiences across the research journey post PhD. 

During the workshop, participants were given the opportunity to ask questions and discuss any aspect of the research pathway with the presenters. In small break-out rooms, attendees were able develop their own ideas on how to manage the move from PhD to research staff. 

Speakers included Professor Anna Timperio, (Deakin University), Professor Stewart Trost (Queensland University of Technology), Dr Jennifer Brunet (University of Ottawa), Dr Jean-Philippe Chaput (University of Ottawa),  Dr Brittany Johnson (Flinders University), Dr Nicholas Kuzik, (Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute).

During the workshop, participants were given advice on what makes a good elevator pitch and had the opportunity to create their own about themselves and their research. Attendees had the chance to interact with other NESI members in small break-out rooms to discuss the topics covered during the session. Attendees were encouraged to build on the networks created during this workshop throughout the remainder of the online conference. 

Speakers included Professor Catherine Sabiston (University of Toronto), Dr Ciaran Fairman (University of South Carolina) and Professor Zoe Knowles (Liverpool John Moores University)

Full Day Workshop #1

Title: ISBNPA Early Career Researcher workshop

Facilitators: Wendy Van Lippevelde, Sofie Compernolle, Ghent University

Helen Brown, University of Cambridge

Short Synopsis: The ‘Early Career Researcher’ workshop will give participants an opportunity to learn from experienced researchers, exploring topics including (but not limited to): career development, building collaborations, grant-writing, insight into how journals work, learning to write good reviews, and time management. The workshop will offer several opportunities for networking with other ECR participants and senior staff, including round-table discussions.

Full Day Workshop #2

Title: Stepping into compositional analysis of activity data; a practical step by step guide to analysing your activity or nutritional data using compositional analysis techniques.

Facilitators: Dr Sebastien Chastin, Dr Philippa Dall, Glasgow Caledonian University

Short Synopsis: Provide participants with skills and tools to understand and apply simple compositional analysis techniques for activity and nutritional data.

Compositional analysis is a branch of statistics that was introduced to the analysis of physical activity data in 2015 by Chastin et al in PLoS ONE to study the combined effects of the behaviours individuals engage in throughout the day such as sleep, sitting, light and moderate to vigorous activity on health. This novel approach introduces a different paradigm to analyse the pattern of time use and study the interactions between different behaviour but also obtain more rigorous and robust statistical results and new insights. A simple introduction is given in the PLoS Blog (http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2015/12/15/recipe-for-a-healthy-day-how-compositional-data-analysis-can-help-us-optimise-our-daily-routine-to-be-healthy/)

It has been deemed a revolution (Katzmarzyk MSSE 2017) but we need to increase capacity in using these techniques amongst health scientist and in particular young researchers. The techniques can be also directly applied to nutritional data.  Both activity data and nutritional data are by nature compositional data. For example, the day is made of periods of time spent during different activity or behaviour such as sleep, sitting engaging in light or moderate to vigorous activity. The total amount of time spent in these behaviour always sums to 24 hours or the whole day and if more time is spent in one behaviour then necessarily this time must be taken away from another. Similarly a dish is composed different nutrient such as carbohydrate, fat etc.., and in a dish if one increases the proportion of one of these nutrients then consequently the proportion of the others must also change. This means that the constituents of a day or a dish are co-dependent on each other and this creates difficulties in using standard techniques but using compositional analysis we can develop more detailed and robust analysis that takes into account this co-dependence.

Full Day Workshop #3

Title: Assessing nutrition and physical activity environments in Early Care and Education (ECE) settings: A workshop on using the Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation (EPAO) Tools

Facilitators: Dianne S. Ward, Stephanie Mazzucca, Amber Vaughn, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Alison Tovar, University of Rhode Island

Short Synopsis: Early care and education (ECE) settings have been highlighted as a central force in shaping young children’s health, and measuring these environments is critical for health promotion efforts. The Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation (EPAO) provides an assessment of practices, environmental provisions, and policies of ECE settings influencing children’s nutrition and physical activity behaviors. The EPAO is a valuable tool for researchers and public health practitioners working in ECE settings, but widespread adoption has been limited due to burdens associated with obtaining adequate training, implementing the observation process, and creating a scoring rubric. To facilitate the EPAO’s use, we have developed easy-to-use and readily available resources including copies of all data collection instruments, data shells with suggested variables names and variable labels, SAS code for scoring, training manual, and data interpretation guide. During this full-day workshop we will 1) introduce measurement of ECE environments, 2) review the EPAO instrument, 3) detail the protocols for implementation, training, and scoring, and 4) discuss customization of the EPAO specific to workshop participants’ research needs.

MORNING HALF DAY WORKSHOPS

Morning Half Day Workshop#1

Title: Making e-/mHealth Work in the Real World: Lessons from Industry and Academia

Facilitators: Melanie Hingle, University of Arizona, Department of Nutritional Sciences, Tucson, AZ, USA

Heather Patrick Envolve PeopleCare, Bethesda, MD, United States

Paul Sacher, Slimming World, United Kingdom

Kate Wolin, ScaleDown, Chicago, IL, United States

Donna Spruijt-Metz, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Short Synopsis: Development and deployment of electronic and mobile health (e/mHealth) technologies by industry and academia have operated largely in parallel. Little systematic research has evaluated the effectiveness of commercial products, or determined when, how and for whom technologies work best. At the same time, many commercially designed and supported products have high adoption and user rates compared to products designed by researchers. The purpose of this workshop is to advance understanding of the science and practice of e/mHealth from the perspectives of industry and academic experts who are engaged in novel methods of development, implementation, and evaluation beyond the confines of the traditional RCT.

This half day workshop has 4 parts:

1. state of the evidence;
2. case studies from industry;
3. special topics and small group discussions to align and advance the field;
4. panel discussion regarding the future of e/mHealth science and practice, and the role of industry-academic partnerships.

Morning Half Day Workshop#2

Title: Grasping Physical Activity: Using 3D printers to visualize physical activity

Facilitators: Kelly Mackintosh, Melitta McNarry, Parisa Eslambolchilar, Sam Crossley, Swansea University

Short Synopsis: A frequently cited barrier to physical activity is that guidelines are difficult to measure, interpret and apply in terms of everyday activities. Recent research has investigated the integration of 3D printing to create a tangible output, which provides children with a novel and exciting way to conceptualize their physical activity levels.

This interactive session will present the real-time monitoring and visualization of physical activity as well as collect live data that is simultaneously displayed on the screen and subsequently printed in the form of a 3D shape. The greater the range of movements, the more interesting the shape! This will then be used to discuss key public health messages regarding physical activity and the process that went into developing the coding for the models and the choice of model shapes. Those interested in Engineering, Physiology, Physical Activity, Health, Psychology and Computer Science will be intrigued by this holistic approach.

Morning Half Day Workshop#4

Title: Faking it: using a fake food buffet to examine food choice

Facilitators: Tamara Bucher, ETH Zurich and The University of Newcastle (AU)

Dr Megan Rollo, the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia

Prof Moira Dean, Dr Tony Benson, Queen’s University Belfast, UK

Short Synopsis: In this workshop you will learn how you can use realistic food replicas (Fake Foods) to run cost and time efficient experiments to answer interesting research questions related to product, meal and portion size selection.

Experimental research involving real food is often limited by practical problems like high costs, limited infrastructure, and food preparation effort. Hence, traditional food choice experiments were often limited to a small food variety. The fake food buffet (FFB) is a simple experimental infrastructure, which can overcome these practical limitations. The FFB can be used to investigate health claims, nutrient information, nudging, educational interventions and social influences.

Target audience: Researchers interested in establishing a FFB infrastructure or already working with FFB and those interested in collaborating with a FFB infrastructure to answer a research question.

Participants will

•             Interactively learn how to use fake foods

•             Get access to relevant resources

•             Gain insight into ongoing research and technological advances

•             Connect with researchers working with FFBs

Morning Half Day Workshop#5

Title: Utilising Social Networks for Behaviour Change in Complex Interventions

Facilitators: Dr Ruth Hunter, Dr Jennifer Badham, UKCRC Centre of Excellence for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast

Dr Kayla de la Haye, Institute for Health Promotion & Disease Preventative Research, University of Southern California

Short Synopsis: Evidence demonstrates that our embeddedness in social networks (i.e. our friends, family, neighbours, colleagues) affects our health and subsequently our ability to change our health behaviours. An emerging area in public health research involves designing, implementing and evaluating interventions that take account of these social networks. This multidisciplinary, interactive workshop focuses specifically on social network interventions – interventions that purposively utilizesocial networks to generate and/or accelerate individual behaviour change or system level change aimed at influencing health improvement action and, subsequently, the behaviour of those individuals within it. Social network interventions can be utilized in various aspects, including the targeting, delivery and diffusion of interventions. This workshop is particularly topical given the current debate regarding the need to move beyond the individual level for health behaviour change. This workshop would be of interest to researchers at all levels involved in complex intervention. No prior knowledge or expertise regarding social networks is required.

Morning Half Day Workshop#6

Title: Assessing dietary intake in intervention studies: Pitfalls, strategies and future research needs

Facilitators: Sharon Kirkpatrick, School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada

Clare Collins, Priority Research Centre for Physical Activity and Nutrition, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia

Ruth Keogh, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

Susan Krebs-Smith, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA

Marian Neuhouser, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, USA

Angela Wallace, Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada

Short Synopsis: The evaluation of interventions aimed at modifying diet rests on the ability to accurately assess intake. However, self-report dietary assessment tools are prone to intervention-related biases (e.g., those exposed to nutrition education may report diet differently than those in comparison groups). This differential bias can lead to spurious results and reduced power to detect intervention effects. The aim of this workshop is to interactively explore considerations and pitfalls in assessing diet in intervention studies. We will examine challenges in assessing dietary intakes broadly and with specific reference to dietary outcomes in intervention trials. We will explore the potential for incorporating biomarkers into dietary intervention trials, practical considerations for diet assessment in community-based trials, and available resources to guide diet assessment. Attendees will have the opportunity to pose questions related to their own trials as well as to engage in discussions of approaches for advancing this area of research. The workshop will conclude with time devoted to consultations among participants and presenters.

Morning Half Day Workshop#7

Title: Nudging and choice architecture: promises and pitfalls

Facilitators: Prof. Emely de Vet, Wageningen University and Research

Prof. Denise de Ridder, Utrecht University

Short Synopsis: Nudges and choice architecture are becoming increasingly popular tools in interventions, also in behavioral nutrition and physical activity. Nudges make use of the idea that people make decisions on their automatic pilot based on biases, heuristics or (perceptual) errors. By exploiting this knowledge about human decision-making to steer decisions in more desired directions, nudges may lead to behavior change without having to rely on willpower or effort or without restricting choice. Although the nudge concept is gaining popularity, many misperceptions about nudging exist. Also, research on nudging is just starting to emerge, and many questions are still unanswered. 

The workshop aims

1. to present state-of-the-art research on nudging as a novel intervention tool,
2. to familiarize with theories in behavioral sciences that provide good starting points for designing nudges ,
3. to experience how nudges can be designed,  and
4. to reflect on the promises and pitfalls of nudge research.

AFTERNOON HALF DAY WORKSHOPS

Afternoon Half Day Workshop#3 (PLEASE NOTE THIS WORKSHOP HAS BEEN MOVED FROM MORNING TO AFTERNOON)

Title: Mobile Methods for Dietary Assessment: Image-assisted and Image-based Dietary Assessment Methods

Facilitators: Associate Professor Deborah Kerr, School of Public Health, Curtin University

Prof. Carol J. Boushey, University of Hawaii

Prof. Edward J. Delp, Fengqing Maggie Zhu, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Purdue University

Short Synopsis: Aims of the workshop are to provide researchers an overview of:

• image-assisted and image-based dietary assessment methods.

• image review methods from trained analyst to automation.

• challenges and solutions for implementing mobile methods

• implementing future applications for their research

Dietary assessment is challenging but whether technology methods are fully validated or not, these will be the preferred methods of the future in spite of the profession’s inertia to embrace them. The workshop will provide a ‘hands-on’ approach to learning about mobile methods for assessing diet from the multidisciplinary team of nutritionists and engineers who invented the Technology Assisted Dietary Assessment (TADA) system that uses image analysis and visualization on mobile telephones, to aid researchers collect dietary intake with limited burden. The presenters will share the key learnings in the implementation of mobile methods in various studies in more than 1,000 community dwelling populations including young children, adults and overweight adults.

PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN MOBILE DEVICE TO THE WORKSHOP

Afternoon Half Day Workshop#8

Title: Designing and evaluating physical activity interventions for people with mental health issues

Facilitators: Prof Adrian Taylor, Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine & Dentistry

Guy Faulkner, University of British Colombia, Canada

Amanda Rebar, Central Queensland University, Australia

Short Synopsis: Designing and evaluating physical activity interventions for people with mental health issues. Those with poor mental health and low well-being are much more likely to have lower levels of physical activity. Yet we know relatively little about the environmental, social, economic and psychological determinants that influence physical activity for these populations, and the acceptability and feasibility of interventions to support behaviour change.

The overall objective of this workshop will be to highlight the unique opportunities to conduct mixed methods research with participants with a wide range of mental health issues (e.g., anxiety, depression, severe mental illness, and addictions) and to provide a framework for developing interventions for such populations. Participants will be able to offer their own experiences of such research (including other patient groups), to develop a consensus on where gaps in our understanding exist, and have guidance to develop their own systematic approach to developing and evaluating relevant complex interventions.

Please click here to view the short video about this session.

Afternoon Half Day Workshop#9

Title: Contextually Rich Physical Behaviour Data: The Key to Behaviour Change?

Facilitators: Dr Kate Lyden, Douglas Maxwell, PAL Technologies Ltd

Short Synopsis: Identifying and acknowledging contextual factors that influence human behavior can help promote the successful adoption and maintenance of positive lifestyle habits.  The goals of this workshop are to demonstrate how we can 1) derive contextually rich data on human behavior from body worn accelerometers and 2) use data visualization tools to integrate multiple streams of behavioral information. Participants will receive hands on experience using example data sets from healthy and clinical populations relevant to both physical activity and nutrition research.  For example, we will demonstrate how to 1) identify common modes of travel (e.g., walking, cycling, car, train), 2) integrate this information with quantitative measures (e.g., number of steps, time spent sitting) and 3) use these contextually rich data to develop targeted messaging about healthier travel choices to school and work.  Other examples will include how data derived from an accelerometer can be integrated with nutrition and 24 hour continuous glucose monitor data to better understand how lifestyle choices impact glucose and insulin metabolism in those at risk for diabetes.

Afternoon Half Day Workshop#10

Title: Prescribing walking for health benefit

Facilitators: Dr Elaine Murtagh, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland

Prof Marie Murphy, Ulster University, Northern Ireland

Prof Catrine Tudor-Locke, University of Massachusetts Amherst, US

Dr Paul Kelly, University of Edinburgh, UK

Short Synopsis: Prescribing walking for health benefit. Walking is eminently suited to physical activity prescription as it can be incorporated into activities of daily living, requires no special skills or facilities, and is achievable by virtually all age groups with little injury risk. It is therefore an ideal exercise mode for interventions which target inactive or low active individuals. This workshop will demonstrate the viability of walking as an exercise mode in public health interventions and help participants to prescribe and measure walking at an appropriate intensity.

Participants will be able to:

1. Use a range of tools (e.g. HR monitors, pedometers, and smart phone Apps) to elicit a moderate exercise intensity in subjects
2. Describe the range of walking speeds, cadences and intensities elicited when adults are asked to self-select their own walking pace and walk “briskly”
3. Experience several prescription tools in an outdoor setting.
   Speakers include: Prof Marie Murphy, Dr Elaine Murtagh, Prof Catrine Tudor-Locke

Please click here to view the short video about this session.

Afternoon Half Day Workshop#11

Title: Fundamental and Functional Movement Literacy’ – the provision of meaningful childhood physical activity experiences.

Facilitators: Dr. Wesley O’ Brien, Prof. Michael Duncan, Ms. Orlagh Farmer, University College Cork, Ireland.

Short Synopsis: This workshop will critically discuss and actively engage participants within the thematic area of childhood ‘movement’. Participants will practice a variety of movement activities, as guided by creative, novel and evidence-based strategies from a European perspective. The workshop is designed to improve the critical eye of the participants towards the assessment of ‘fundamental’ and ‘functional’ movement literacy. During the course of the workshop, participants will share their global experiences of ‘movement-oriented’ interventions, and collectively discuss the measurable outcomes in determining programme efficacy. A key component of this workshop will be the engagement of participants through active learning methodologies (digital exercises, problem solving, cooperative learning), designed to stimulate participants’ thinking towards the optimization of childhood movement. This workshop will be particularly suited to those interested in the fields of childhood physical activity promotion, motor development, skill development, human movement, physical education and intervention implementation.

Afternoon Half Day Workshop#12

Title: Health Promotion with Indigenous Communities

Facilitators: Lucie Lévesque, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

Treena Delormier Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Hawai’i Manoa

Alex M. McComber, Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project, Kahnawake Mohawk Territory

Tara-Leigh McHugh, University of Alberta

Short Synopsis: This 4-hour workshop will combine didactic and interactive approaches, using a variety of multimedia strategies, brainstorming activities, story-telling, and small group work to master knowledge and skills focused on engaging relevant stakeholders in Indigenous-academic partnered research, enhancing cultural safety for research, using theory, research evidence, strategic planning, and influencing policy all through a decolonizing lens. Following Indigenous protocols, an Elder from the local territory will be invited to provide an opening to the workshop session. Activities will draw on community engaged research approaches, Indigenous methodologies, and case study examples. Workshop participants will be guided in sample community mobilization interactive activities designed with Indigenous communities in mind. A group de-briefing and interactive discussion will follow and the Elder will offer a closing ceremony.

Afternoon Half Day Workshop#13

Title: How to disseminate nutrition and physical activity research effectively to policy makers?

Facilitators: Beth Racine, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Elizabeth Ablah, University of Kansas School of Medicine Wichita

Mai Wei, Ohio State University

April Oh, National Institutes of Health

Joreintje Mackenbach, VU University Medical Center

Short Synopsis: This workshop will be led by ISBNPA members with experience working with local policy makers.  A Victoria policy maker will participate in the session. Finally, workshop participants will spend time developing an action plan to communicate and engage with local policy makers.

Many in the ISBNPA community conduct work that is of interest to policy makers.  However, researchers are trained primarily to produce research products for a research audience. Many have not been trained on the best ways to disseminate our research to the policy makers. It is critically important that ISBNPA researchers inform policy makers since policy makers have enormous power to influence nutrition and physical activity behavior and environment.

Workshop Aims:

1. To learn the best practices for engaging with policy makers

2. To discuss the types of informational materials that appeal to politicians and help best convey your research

3. To plan a strategy for engaging with politicians to disseminate your work