Abstract
Background. To reduce overweight and obesity rates, various Dutch municipalities applied healthy weight approaches (HWAs) that connect the medical and social domain. To strengthen HWAs and thus healthcare, learning communities (LCs) were implemented in 2021 that included multidisciplinary members like policy makers, care professionals, practice professionals and patients/citizens. LCs aim to stimulate learning, cross-sectoral collaboration, and actions on multiple levels and themes to leverage change. However, it is unclear whether LC actions contribute to applying actions to leverage change, and what the perceived LC impact is according LC members, while this determines adequate action implementation, and the continuation of LCs. Therefore, this study aims to gain insights into the perceived impact of these LCs on HWAs.
Approach. This two-step study was performed among two LCs that had eight meetings each, and one steering committee that had two meetings. These meetings ended with creating action lists. First, we analyzed the action lists by identifying the corresponding themes and levels, running frequencies and ordinal regression analyses. Second, we thematically analyzed qualitative LC meeting evaluation questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews among LC members.
Results. We present our pre-liminary results. In summary, actions targeted most themes and levels to leverage HWA change. Still, the themes ""knowledge exchange"" and ""combined forces"" were targeted the most. Some type of actions seemed more likely to be executed successfully; and some type of actions were more likely to be formulated throughout later LC meetings, which will be elaborated during the presentation. Members perceived LC impacts on the HWA regarding three main themes: “Ideas about the next steps toward solutions”, “More collaboration” and “Working more effectively”.
Implications. Conducting action lists analyses and interviews gained insights into short term outcomes, which may be used during LC meetings to continuously adjust LCs, HWAs, and healthcare actions were necessary. Future research is recommended.