I.Family Study – Spain
I.Family – Investigating the determinants of food choice, lifestyle and health in European children, adolescents and their parents-, which is the follow-up of IDEFICS study- Identification and Prevention of Dietary and lifestyle-induced Health Effects In Children and Infants- will start at the beginning of April of 2013 and will end in June 2014.
Three years after the IDEFICS study experience, in May 2013, the GENUD (Growth, Exercise, Nutrition and Development) Research Group from the University of Zaragoza (Spain), started the I.Family adventure. Fieldworkers were highly motivated and aware of the great challenge they were facing this time. They not only had to obtain measurements on the 1,500 IDEFICS children but also needed to engage their parents and siblings in the cohort.
Nowadays in our centre, a total of eight researchers are involved in the I.Family fieldwork. So far a total of 240 subjects have already been measured from which 96 are IDEFICS participants, 127 are parents and 17 are siblings. We are glad to say that the response rate is meeting our expectations. However, the most positive aspect is that both parents and children or adolescents are quite enthusiastic and willing to take part in all the offered examinations which means that we will obtain an important proportion of data from each participant. That will help us to increase the knowledge about the lifestyle of these families and, therefore, to improve the understanding of obesity aetiology.
Mary Miguel Berges, one of the latest incorporations to the field staff, says: “I consider the I.Family project as a great chance of assessing the nutritional status of the participants as well as to evaluating the welfare of the children or adolescents and their families. Furthermore, being involved in this project allows us to work closely with excellent research groups from all Europe. To me, it is being a rewarding experience at both professional and personal level”. An I.Family participant adds: “I have enjoyed taking part in the project again a lot. Now that I have grown up I enjoyed the measurements more and found them even funnier than before.”
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