Sleep program for teenagers Charge Your Brainzzz expands target group and approach

Tailored to VMBO

According to the researchers, the latter is necessary because scientific studies show that unhealthy sleep is more common among teenagers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. They worry more before going to sleep, have less knowledge about the importance of healthy sleep and are more likely to live in a less favorable sleep environment. For example, they may live in noisier neighborhoods, in smaller or lower-quality homes, and are more likely to have to share their bedroom with others. In addition to the problem being more prevalent in this group, there is also less preventive support available. For this reason, the researchers want to tailor Charge Your Brainzzz 2.0 to VMBO students. They aim to achieve this by ensuring that the intervention meets their wishes, needs and living environment, while also making the intervention materials easier to understand.

To ensure that the program fits the daily lives of VMBO students and the school curriculum as well as possible, the researchers are involving the students, their parents and teachers. Approximately 500 VMBO students, from five to eight schools in four regions, will use and evaluate the teaching package. To burden the students as little as possible, the researchers will make as much use as possible of existing monitoring systems to evaluate their sleep and the effect of the intervention on their sleep.

Collaboration

Charge Your Brainzzz 2.0 will start in mid-May 2020 and will last approximately four years. The project is being carried out in collaboration with, among others, researchers from Sarphati Amsterdam (the GGD's scientific research institute), the University of Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam and the University of Twente. Many partners from the social sector, education, healthcare and various municipalities are also involved. GLOS Educatief is responsible for the promotion and implementation of Charge Your Brainzzz 2.0. To this end, GLOS Educatief is setting up an office and website to support the implementation.

Funding

For the expansion of the teaching program, the consortium received €400,000 in funding from ZonMw and a further €50,000 from the Brain Foundation.