Publicaties

Background Understanding motivational determinants of physical activity (PA) is essential to guide the implementation of PA at individual and population level. Knowledge about the cross-cultural generalizability of these determinants is lacking and they have mostly been studied as separate factors. This study compares a motivational process model across samples from diverse populations with, or at risk of diabetes. Methods Measurement invariance ...

Objective The misuse of prescription stimulants among students has been identified as a public health problem. To date, most research has focused on individual-level determinants of stimulant misuse, making research on the socio-cultural context of students' misuse a priority. This study aims to test the applicability of the Theory of Triadic Influence, capturing three influence streams (personal, social and cultural) and three causational ...

Introduction: Although many countries have been implementing integrated care, the scale-up remains difficult. Macro-level system barriers play an important role. By selecting three key policies, which have implemented integrated care in Belgium over the last 10 years, we aim to go beyond the identification of their specific barriers and facilitators to obtain an overarching generic view. Methods: 27 participants were purposefully selected, to ...

IntroductionCambodia has achieved significant progress in maternal health, yet remains in the group of countries with the highest maternal mortality ratio in South-East Asia. Extra efforts are needed to improve maternal health through assessing the coverage of maternal health services as a continuum of care (CoC) and identifying the gaps. Our study aims to explore the coverage level of the Optimal CoC by (1) measuring the continuity of optimal ...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic and the national COVID-19 measures might have increased potential barriers to abortion care and created new ones, especially for vulnerable groups. This study documents the impact of the pandemic and the lockdown measures on the profile of people going through the abortion process. Methods Using anonymized patient records from a Belgian abortion centre, we first compared the number of abortion requests and ...

Introduction This study produces an estimate of the proportion of eligible PrEP users among people of Sub-Saharan African background based on the Belgian PrEP eligibility criteria and examines associations with socio-economic and demographic characteristics. Methods We performed logistic regression analysis on data of a representative community-based survey conducted among Sub-Saharan African communities (n = 685) living in Antwerp. Results ...

Limited information exists on life satisfaction and hope of internally displaced children in conflict-affected areas. Using both the ecological and resilience frameworks on children's well-being, this study investigates the associations between age, gender, parent-child relationship and livelihood support on life satisfaction and hope of conflict affected children. The study focuses on children aged 7-18 years (n=384) within two states in ...

Background Prescription stimulants such as methylphenidate are usually prescribed to treat attention deficit (and hyperactivity) disorders (ADHD). Recently, these drugs have gained popularity among college students, because of the belief that they can help improve academic performance. Objectives This study assessed whether engaging in nonmedical use of prescription stimulants for cognitive enhancement is a rational or a more spontaneous ...

The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding measures impacted the organisation of services for abortion on request in Flanders, Belgium. This study describes abortion centre staff’s perceptions of the influence of protective measures on abortion consultations and procedures, and aims to identify obstacles and opportunities that arose from this situation. Through the anonymised patient records of one Flemish abortion centre, we compared the number of ...