Health and risk behaviours might occur in clusters. For example, someone who eats a lot of fruit might also exercise a lot; similarly, someone who drinks a lot might also engage in dangerous driving. Our recently published article “Clustering of health and risk behaviour in immigrant and indigenous Dutch residents aged 19–40 years” sought to investigate whether there are any differences in the clustering of health and risk behaviours in immigrant and indigenous Dutch residents.
The authors (Professor Sijmen A. Reijneveld, Dr. Maroesjka van Nieuwenhuijzen, Dr. Mariska Klein Velderman, Dr Theo W.G.M. Paulussen and Professor Marianne Junger) asked indigenous Dutch people as well as immigrants from non-industrialised countries about health behaviours. They found that health and risk behaviours can co-occur in 3 clusters in indigenous groups and in two clusters in immigrant groups and the main difference lies in health enhancing behaviours.
IJPH has published this article with Open Access, which means that you can read the full study free of charge, either by downloading the pdf here or by accessing the html version here.
What do you think? How could these result be used in public health policy?
