Early help

Research project

Further development of early prevention

Long-term monitoring and involvement of the social environment

Pregnancy and the first years of life already represent important windows of opportunity for health promotion and concrete interventions that can influence the link between social and health disadvantage.
Inverse associations between health and social status, combined with low uptake of health promotion services, require low-threshold access to the target group of socially disadvantaged families.
A corresponding approach is offered by the bundle of measures of early help, especially the possibility for families to be supported by a so-called family midwife in the first year of the child's life. So far, however, there has been a lack of information on the sustainable effects of support by a family midwife with regard to the development of children and their families. The same applies to the success factors of the institutional networking of the various experts and support services in the development process of the child and the family, which is fundamentally envisaged with early prevention.

The overall objective of the research project "Further Development of Early Intervention - Long-term Observation and Integration of the Social Environment" is to identify options for the further development of early intervention in the model region of Fulda.

The associated sub-goals of the project are:

  • Prospective collection of health and social data of children from the first year of life and their families in order to identify and analyse the development of health and social disadvantages (sub-research project BaBi-Long-term observation, BaBi-LANG).
  • Analysis of social resources in the social space of families in difficult life situations as well as analysis of the needs of fathers and needs that can be derived from them

Qualitative and quantitative methods

2014

  • Walz H. Further development of early help. An interdisciplinary research project of the Department of OE & SW. Project presentation at the Agora of the Department of Oecotrophology at Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, 15.10.2014.
  • Walz H. Further development of early help. An interdisciplinary research project of the Faculty of OE & SW. Project presentation in the context of the module "Life Cycle Nutrition" of the Master's programme Public Health Nutrition, Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, 29.10.2014.
  • Walz H, Alisch M, Kroke A. Study protocol BaBi-LANG: Long-term observation of children from the age of 1 from families in difficult life situations. 9th Annual Conference of the German Society for Epidemiology (DGEpi), 17-20.09.2014, Ulm.
  • Walz H. "The beauty of birth cohorts ...". 9th Annual Meeting of the German Society for Epidemiology. Ernaehr Umschau 2014; 10: M536-7.

2015

  • Walz H, Butter A, Freytag-Leyer B, Brunner J, Alisch M, Kroke A. Which information- and health-promoting offers exist for (expectant) fathers? - Characterisation of a model region 52nd Scientific Congress of the German Nutrition Society (DGE), 11-13.03.2015, Halle (Saale).
  • Alisch M., Kroke A. Early help from a parent's perspective. Congress Poverty and Health, Berlin, 05.-06.03.2015

2016

  • Schmidt M., Walz H, Druschel J, Günther ALB, Kroke A. Subjectively perceived possibilities of fathers to influence nutritional and health-related factors in the perinatal period - an explorative qualitative study. 53rd Scientific Congress of the German Nutrition Society (DGE), Fulda, 02.-04.03.2016.
  • Alisch M., Brunner J. "We ask you! ... as experts in early help". Participatory research with mothers in difficult life situations. Congress Poverty and Health, Berlin, 17-18.03.2016
  • Alisch M., Brunner J. "We ask you! ... as experts in early help". Findings from participatory social research with mothers in difficult life situations. In: Gesundheit Berlin-Brandenburg (ed.) (2016): Documentation Congress Poverty and Health. Berlin, pp. 1-7 URL: www.armut-und-gesundheit.de/fileadmin/user_upload/MAIN-dateien/Kongress_A_G/A_G_16/A_G_16__Material/Dokumentation/Alisch__M._et_al_3.pdf
  • Günther ALB, Brunner J, Alisch M, Walz H, Kroke A. Infant and young child feeding from the perspective of families in difficult life situations. Gender conference 2016 of the Gender and Women's Research Centre (gFFZ), Fulda, 07.10.2016.

2017

  • Günther, ALB. Infant and young child feeding from the perspective of families in difficult life situations. First insights from a research project in the context of early help. Research workshop "Gender dimensions in infant feeding" of the Gender and Women's Research Centre (gFFZ) of the Hessian Universities. Frankfurt a.M., 17.06.2017
  • Alisch M., Brunner, J. "Es war ja jetzt eigentlich au wirklich Glück [...]" Family midwives and parents - relationships between solidarity and control. Congress Poverty and Health, Berlin, 16.-17.03.2017
  • Reibstein M., Günther ALB, Brunner J, Kroke A. Health inequalities in the phase of pregnancy and early childhood - characterisation of the participants of a long-term observation with families in difficult life situations. Congress Poverty and Health, Berlin, 16-17.03.2017.
  • Alisch, M./Brunner. J. Project example: Further development of early help in Hesse. The focus group in participatory research. Contribution in the context of the expert workshop on PartNetExplanatory Videos - Pilot Study on the Conception, Production and Evaluation of German-language Videos on Participatory Methods in Social and Health Research, Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, 07 June 2017.

Projektleitung

Prof. Dr. habil. Anja Kroke

Preventive Strategies in Nutrition • Nutritional Epidemiology

Projektleitung

Prof. Dr. habil. Monika Alisch

Social planning, social space and community work

Project information

Keywords:
Early help, health inequalities, perinatal programming, long-term observation, social environment

Funding:
City of…