2.2. Study Population
EVENTS, EVENT, RECRUITMENT
Participants were recruited in two different rural municipalities in north-west Germany to separate the groups based on location. The two municipalities were comparable in terms of socio-demographic and cultural characteristics and located in the same region, although the intervention municipality had around twice as many inhabitants as the control municipality. All individuals from the general population who were at least 18 years of age and had the physical and mental ability to take part in this study were eligible to participate in this study. Local stakeholders were involved in the recruitment of participants. A cooperative health market was conducted in the intervention municipality (February 2018) with the aim of recruiting participants for this study. Participants in the CG were mainly recruited at a local event (September 2018). Interested citizens were able to register for the IG or CG during these events, depending on where they lived. Distributing flyers and publishing newspaper articles were also used to recruit participants in both municipalities. Due to the complex population-based public health approach, in which the intervention was conducted in a real-world context to permit the examination of authentic behavior, the randomization of participants was not feasible (as described previously [