Antony Morgan

• Epidemiology
• Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University

Background The increase in adolescents reporting mental health problems presents a major public health challenge. The complex association between mental health and social capital motivates further investigation of social capital as a crucial aspect in shaping adolescents’ help-seeking knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours. Aim This protocol present...

Background: Adolescent mental health (AMH) needs in England have increased dramatically and needs exceed treatment availability. This study undertook a comparative assessment of the health and economic return on investment (ROI) of interventions to prevent and treat mental disorders among adolescents (10-19 years) and examined intervention afforda...

Se propone un "modelo sinérgico" para avanzar en la integración de elementos clave de la salutogénesis y el modelo de activos para la salud, utilizando como marco para esta articulación la teoría bioecológica de Bronfenbrenner. El sentido de coherencia es clave para facilitar la transformación de recursos potenciales en activos disponibles, produci...

Introduction This research investigates how community-led organisations’ (CLOs’) use of assets-based approaches improves health and well-being, and how that might be different in different contexts. Assets-based approaches involve ‘doing with’ rather than ‘doing to’ and bring people in communities together to achieve positive change using their own...

Asset-based approaches are becoming more common within public health interventions; however, due to variations in terminology, it can be difficult to identify asset-based approaches. The study aimed to develop and test a framework that could distinguish between asset-based and deficit-based community studies, whilst acknowledging there is a continu...

Importance School closures as part of broader social lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic may be associated with the health and well-being of children and adolescents. Objective To review published reports on the association of school closures during broader social lockdown with mental health, health behaviors, and well-being in children...

Purpose The present comparative study assessed the familiarity of adolescents with marijuana. We undertook a study in different countries to investigate the extent of their acquaintance with marijuana, their opinions about it, and their specific knowledge of its consequences. Methods The study was undertaken in Australia, Israel, Russia, Ukraine a...

This is the final report of the FinWell London research project which aimed to review the ways in which money and health interrelate in the lives of people in urban places, such as the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. This work offers an analysis of how, why and for whom financial health and long-term conditions interact and recommends wa...

This paper extracts, organises and summarises findings on adolescent mental health from a major international population study of young people using a scoping review methodology and applying a bio-ecological framework. Population data has been collected from more than 1.5 million adolescents over 37 years by the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Chil...

Introduction: In light of the ever-growing mental health disease burden among young people worldwide, we aim to systematically review the global literature to identify the public health programmes targeted at promoting mental health and well-being in young people, the reported/anticipated mental health-related outcomes of the implemented public he...

Inequalities in young people's mental health have been documented according to social class but less is known about determinants that can buffer or mediate the relationship. Social capital has the potential to contribute to alleviating observed health inequalities. However, clarity about how it can be understood and measured in relation to mental h...

This article proposes to advance the connections between salutogenic theory and assets models for health improvement. There is a need to integrate their use in public health and health promotion so that their respective potentials can be fully developed. This requires their synergies to be made more explicit so that a more coherent approach can be...

Purpose The aim of the study was to assess the familiarity of adolescents with e-cigarettes. We performed a survey to investigate the frequency of their contact with e-cigarettes, beliefs about this sort of smoking (vaping), and their real knowledge of its effects. Methods The survey was carried out among 1600 high school students in the USA, Isra...

Background: The Adolescent Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) is a psychometrically valid tool to evaluate the domains of subjective well-being, but there is a lack of investigations which could distinguish subgroups with distinct subjective well-being profiles based on this measurement. Therefore, after testing the competing measurement...

Social capital, and more particularly the social networks that define its existence, is said to benefit health and well‐being. In individuals recovering from alcohol and drug addiction, social capital accruing from social networks support treatment, recovery and maintenance. Therefore, the concept of social capital is important for public health pr...

Aaron Antonovsky advanced the concept of salutogenesis almost four decades ago (Antonovsky, Health, Stress and Coping. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 1979; Unravelling the Mystery of Health. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, 1987). Salutogenesis posits that life experiences shape the sense of coherence (SOCthat helps to mobilize resources to cope wi...

Background Recent reports of increasing prevalence of frequent health complaints and mental health problems among adolescents call for directing more attention on determinants of adolescent health. The relationship between health and social capital has gained increased attention since the early 2000’s and research at review level confirms the impor...

Objective To provide an up-to-date overview of health assets in a global context both from a theoretical perspective and its practical applications to address health inequalities and achieve sustainable health. Design A systematic review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines....

Former studies demonstrated that antisocial youth with callous-unemotional (CU) traits are impaired in the processing of negative emotional stimuli. The aim of the current study was to explore the moderating role of different behavioural (i.e. conduct problems, hyperactivity-inattention) and emotional problems (i.e. internalizing symptoms) in the r...

Background In 2004, a World Health Report on road safety called for enforcement of measures such as seatbelt use, effective at minimizing morbidity and mortality caused by road traffic accidents. However, injuries caused by seatbelt use have also been described. Over a decade after publication of the World Health Report on road safety, this study s...

Background: Social capital has been found to be positively associated with various health and well-being outcomes amongst children. Less is known about how social capital may be generated and specifically in relation to children in the school setting. Drawing on the social cohesion approach and the democratic health educational methodology IVAC (I...

The Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth (AFQ-Y8) was developed to measure psychological inflexibility. Although the questionnaire is a well-known tool in clinical practice, its psychometric properties have not been widely investigated in the target population of children and adolescents. The purpose of this study was to investigate the fac...

En 1987 se inició por la OMS el Proyecto Ciudades Saludables, un año después la Declaración de Adelaida desarrolló el enfoque de salud en todas las políticas. Morgan y Ziglio en 2007 propusieron el modelo de activos para la salud. El objetivo es identificar el activo para la salud con mayor concordancia según la ciudadanía, profesionales y responsa...

Antecedentes/Objetivos: La Organización Mundial de la Salud en la década de 1980 definió la calidad de vida en función de la manera en que el individuo percibe el lugar que ocupa en el entorno cultural y en el sistema de valores en que vive, así como en relación con sus objetivos, expectativas, criterios y preocupaciones. El objetivo de este estudi...

Background Socioeconomic inequalities in adolescent health predict future inequalities in adult health. Subjective measures of socioeconomic status (SES) may contribute with an increased understanding of these inequalities. The aim of this study was to investigate socioeconomic health inequalities using both a subjective and an objective measure of...

Decisions in public health should be based on the best available evidence, reviewed and appraised using a rigorous and transparent methodology. The Project on a Framework for Rating Evidence in Public Health (PRECEPT) defined a methodology for evaluating and grading evidence in infectious disease epidemiology, prevention and control that takes diff...

This study aims to understand the role that optimism could play in the context of a health asset approach to promote adolescent health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Adolescents (n = 948), between 11 and 16 years old from a medium-sized rural town in Sweden, answered questionnaires measuring optimism, pessimism, and HRQOL. The findings indicate a...

Justification: Salutogenic mainstreaming can enhance cross-sectoral coordinated action and optimize health resources. Goals: To describe the process and results of the intersectoral development of a map of active health and coexistence. Design and Methods: A qualitative descriptive study with a sample of 14 managers and healthcare professionals and...

El artículo pretende reflexionar sobre las oportunidades que supone la adaptación de las Guías de Salud Pública del “National Institute for Health and Care Excellence” (NICE) al contexto de la Comunitat Valenciana en España. Los principales elementos para el éxito de esta adaptación serían: disponer de apoyo directivo; activar un proceso (partiendo...

Perseverative cognitions—rumination and worry—can contribute to mental and somatic health problems in adolescence. Girls usually report stronger rumination or worry than boys even in earlier years across the development age spectrum. Our aim was to test the gender invariance and psychometric properties of the Nonproductive Thoughts Questionnaire fo...

Health promotion (HP) activities should be evaluated both in terms of process and results. However there remains a lack of information regarding the types of HP community interventions that are performed in our country, which of these are based on the best available evidence, and how the evidence available can be translated into HP recommendations...

An asset-based approach could be useful to revitalise health promotion or community health interventions combining work with multiple partnerships, positive health, community engagement, equity and orientation of health determinants. We set some recommendations about how to incorporate the assets model in programmes, projects and interventions in h...

Twenty years have passed since the publication of the seminal paper 'The salutogenic model as a theory to guide health promotion' (Health Promot Int 1996; 11: :11-18.), in which Antonovsky proposed salutogenesis and its central construct sense of coherence as a way of boosting the theoretical basis for health promotion activities. Since then there...

Ante cualquier situación la valoración de elementos positivos es un buen punto de arranque para comenzar a actuar. Probablemente es tan artificial fijarse sólo en lo negativo como en lo positivo, aunque, en líneas generales, siempre es más fácil argumentar sobre los problemas y los déficits, que sobre las riquezas y los elementos positivos. Esta vi...

Negative life events are one of the major threats to well-being. Some adolescents are more vulnerable, namely adolescents with special needs that face special challenges for growing up healthy and happy. Nevertheless, internal assets can act as protective factors. The aim of this study is to analyze the factors that moderate the impact of negative...

To examine how effectively forwards citation searching with Web of Science (WOS) or Google Scholar (GS) identified evidence to support public health guidance published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Forwards citation searching was performed using GS on a base set of 46 publications and replicated using WOS. WOS and GS wer...

The aim of this commentary is to set out a priority research agenda which will make more systematic the evidence base about why investing in a range of ‘public health assets’ is important for population health. It will rehearse in brief some of the issues that have been raised over the past few years as experience has grown about how to apply the i...

The Project on a Framework for Rating Evidence in Public Health (PRECEPT) is an international collaboration of public health institutes and universities which has been funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) since 2012. Main objective is to define a framework for evaluating and grading evidence in the field of public...

Abstract Stable tendency to perseverative thoughts such as trait rumination and worry can influence somatic health. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between perseverative thoughts and somatic complaints, and the possible mediating effects of perceived stress, negative and positive affectivity in adolescence. Having an ac...

Objectives: Teacher connectedness is an important factor for young people’s well-being. The aim of this paper was to examine teacher connectedness in detail and its potential association with emotional well-being. More specifically, we set out to analyse whether teacher connectedness acted as a universal asset for boys and girls of different ages a...

Background The Project on a Framework for Rating Evidence in Public Health (PRECEPT) was initiated and is being funded by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to define a methodology for evaluating and grading evidence and strength of recommendations in the field of public health, with emphasis on infectious disease epidemi...

Background: Mental health is an important component of overall health and wellbeing and crucial for a happy and meaningful life. The prevalence of mental health problems amongst children and adolescent is high; with estimates suggesting 10-20% suffer from mental health problems at any given time. These mental health problems include internalising...

Background There is a substantial amount of research in child health published each year in the European Union. Much of this work is paid for from public funds, or from charitable donations. This work covers many areas, but it is fragmented, and a great deal of it, especially the material not published in the indexed scientific literature, is hard...

Background There is a substantial amount of research in child health published each year in the European Union. Much of this work is paid for from public funds, or from charitable donations. This work covers many areas, but it is fragmented, and a great deal of it, especially the material not published in the indexed scientific literature, is hard...

Background There is a substantial amount of research in child health published each year in the European Union. Much of this work is paid for from public funds, or from charitable donations. This work covers many areas, but it is fragmented, and a great deal of it, especially the material not published in the indexed scientific literature, is hard...

This study uses a health asset (HA) framework to explore current perspectives on health, wellbeing and their determinants amongst a group of 15-18-year-old adolescents living in the neighbourhood of Zaidin (Granada, Spain). The study was carried out in Summer 2011 using a qualitative approach. It included 20 semi-structured interviews, 2 focus grou...

Health risk behaviours known to result in poorer outcomes in adulthood are generally established in late childhood and adolescence. These 'risky' behaviours include smoking, alcohol and illicit drug use and sexual risk taking. While the role of social capital in the establishment of health risk behaviours in young people has been explored, to date,...

Research on youth civic engagement focuses on individual-level predictors. We examined individual- and school-level characteristics, including family affluence, democratic school social climate and perceived neighborhood social capital, in their relation to civic engagement of 15-year-old students. Data were taken from the 2006 World Health Organiz...

This paper presents work using case studies as a source of data to see if we could extrapolate from the specific to the general particularly with regard to understanding what constitutes effective practice in taking action on SDHI and as a way of enabling policy makers to make better use of knowledge within the case studies and as a way of better u...

Engagement in risk behaviours may pose a significant threat to health if involvement spans multiple behaviours. The asset model suggests that contextual aspects of young people's lives, such as factors related to family, school and community, serve as a protective function against health risk behaviours. A risk-taking index was created from the Eng...

This study examines the social determinants of psychosomatic complaints in young adolescents. Using data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, psychosomatic complaints are studied in 98,773 adolescents (11- and 13-year-olds; 48% 11-year-olds, 52% 13-year-olds; 52% females, 48% males) from 34 European countries. Individual-...

This study used a social capital framework to examine the relationship between a set of potential protective ('health assets') factors and the wellbeing of 15 year adolescents living in Spain and England. The overall purpose of the study was to compare the consistency of these relationships between countries and to investigate their respective rela...

This study examines the social determinants of psychosomatic complaints in young adolescents. Using data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, psychosomatic complaints are studied in 98,773 adolescents (11- and 13-year-olds; 48% 11-year-olds, 52% 13-year-olds; 52% females, 48% males) from 34 European countries. Individual-...

Research on youth civic engagement focuses on individual-level predictors. We examined individual- and school-level characteristics, including family affluence, democratic school social climate and perceived neighborhood social capital, in their relation to civic engagement of 15-year-old students. Data were taken from the 2006 World Health Organiz...

This report, composed of 9 chapters, presents findings from the 2009/2010 survey of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study. This study examined demographic and social influences on the health of young people (aged 11, 13 and 15 years) in 43 countries and regions in the WHO European Region and North America. The children included...

The need to make best use of limited resources in the English National Health Service is now greater than ever. This paper contributes to this endeavour by synthesizing data from cost-effectiveness evidence produced to support the development of public health guidance at the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). No comprehens...

This article compares the self reported health of a sample of 9854 Spanish and Portuguese adolescents aged 11-15 years using an integrated measure of health, which takes account of positive and negative factors that affect overall feelings of health and wellbeing. This improved measure supports the emergence of health agendas that aim to make wellb...

This study explored the differences in individual empowerment outcomes of a group of socially disadvantaged women participating in physical activity promotion. The outcomes observed were assessed in the context of the women's mode of participation and the structural organizational and community level changes, which took place during the implementat...

A group from the Cochrane Collaboration, Campbell Collaboration, and the World Health Organization Measurement and Evidence Knowledge Network has developed guidance on assessing health equity effects in systematic reviews of healthcare interventions. This guidance is also relevant to primary research

SUMMARY POINTS The Commission on Social Determinants for Health has recommended assessment of health equity effects of public policy decisions This article provides guidance on assessing equity for users and authors of systematic reviews of interventions Particular challenges occur in seven components of such reviews: (1) developing a logic model,...

This paper describes the application of the principles of evidence based medicine to public health. It recounts the experience of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in England (NICE) which acquired a remit to develop public health guidance in 2005. Some of the history of the origins of the evidence based approach is described...

Historically, approaches to the promotion of population health have been based on a deficit model. That is, they tend to focus on identifying the problems and needs of populations that require professional resources and high levels of dependence on hospital and welfare services. These deficit models are important and necessary to identify levels of...

Health Assets in a Global Context: Theory, Methods, Action Edited by Antony Morgan, Maggie Davies, and Erio Ziglio As global health inequities continue to widen, policymakers are redoubling their efforts to address them. Yet the effectiveness and quality of these programs vary considerably, sometimes resulting in the reverse of expected outcomes. W...

Social networks have been recognised as an important factor for enhancing the health of people and communities. Bridging social capital, characterised by numerous and varied weak ties, exemplifies a particular type of network that can help people reach their goals and improve their health. This study seeks to contribute to the evidence base on the...

Although the need for intersectoral policy making in health promotion has been commonplace and a high priority for several decades, there is still a lack of appropriate methods available to assess the inputs, processes, and outcomes associated with the effectiveness of such approaches, particularly in relation to sectors outside of health. This pap...

This chapter summarizes the recommendations made by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to raise standards in the programmes and activities used to promote the social and emotional wellbeing of children, specifically in relation to primary education. In doing so it highlights: the role of conceptual frameworks in defini...

The increasing impetus to provide an effective response to childhood obesity has generated a corresponding concern that weight management interventions may lead to emotional problems among young people, notably in relation to the development of a negative body image. However, currently the processes and factors that contribute to the acquisition of...

To examine the association between income inequality and school bullying in an international sample of preadolescents and to test for mediation of this association by the availability of social support from families, peers, and schools. The study used economic data from the 2006 United Nations Development Program Human Development Report and survey...