Designing Intervention Research

Full course description

The important aspects of physical activity as a means to promote mental and physical well-being have been well described in the various Bachelor programs that HMS students come from. In our Western society the development of chronic metabolic diseases, like obesity and type 2 diabetes, is reaching epidemic proportions. Though part of this epidemic can be ascribed to the aging of the population, an alarming increase in the incidence of chronic metabolic disorders (particularly type 2 diabetes) has been reported among children and adolescents. The current epidemic is clearly associated with our sedentary lifestyle combined with an excessive energy intake. Therefore, combined exercise and nutritional interventions need to be designed on a scientific basis to improve health and/or functional performance. For such intervention programs to be effective it is essential to set well-defined goals specific for each target population. In this course we will integrate the different aspects of exercise and nutritional interventions to define the most effective interventions to improve health and/or (sports)performance in various populations. The permissive role of nutritional intervention to allow biological adaptation and improved functional capacity to an exercise stimulus will be addressed from the athletes’ perspective towards the clinical patient. Students will write a research grant application in which they will describe a self-designed (exercise and/or nutritional) intervention in an appropriate study population. Such an intervention can be both acute (i.e. studying mechanisms and/or potential strategies for more long-term application), short-term, or long-term (i.e. studying both mechanisms and actual outcome). The research hypotheses set in these grant applications are to be integrated in the field of sport and exercise sciences, rehabilitation, chronic metabolic disorders (diabetes, obesity, CVD, but also cancer, COPD, RA, etc) and/or general health promotion (including healthy aging, prevention, etc).