Development and implementation of the GeMuKi lifestyle intervention

Motivating parents-to-be and young parents with brief interventions

The preventive healthcare project GeMuKi: Gemeinsam Gesund Vorsorge Plus für Mutter und Kind (Strengthening health promotion: enhanced check-up visits for mother and child), which has been funded by the Innovation Fund of the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) for four years, is about supporting health in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. The project aims to reduce the risk of overweight and obesity in mother and child, strengthen the health literacy of mothers-to-be and young parents, improve cooperation between medical and non-medical healthcare professionals, and strengthen the communication skills of the professionals involved in care.

GeMuKi is a complex intervention comprising various components. It is being implemented in cooperation with gynecologists, midwives and pediatricians. GeMuKi supplements the statutory routine prenatal visits and infant check-ups carried out during pregnancy and the first year of a child’s life with a structured, low-threshold preventive measure in the form of individual counseling sessions covering the topics of body weight, exercise, nutrition and healthy lifestyle. The aim of these consultations is to stimulate women’s intrinsic motivation to behave in ways that promote health.

In this way, GeMuKi is supporting the German national health goal of “health in the perinatal period and the first year of life”, and is in line with both the WHO strategy for prevention of obesity during infancy and the German national action plan for health literacy, plus it contributes to the further development of the healthcare system in Germany. GeMuKi is the project of a consortium led by the Platform for Nutrition and Physical Activity (peb), Berlin. This article describes the intervention and the initial observations and insights gained from its implementation in practice.

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