Abstract:
Background: - In the past three decades prevalence of overweight/obesity has significantly
increased among children and adolescents in developing countries. Some of the health impacts
of overweight are type two diabetic mellitus, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, gall
bladder and fatty liver disease, arthritis and some cancer which are often referred as noncommunicable diseases. Additionally, the impact has reduction on the quality of social life such
as risk of teasing, bullying, social isolation and stigmatization. The end result is linked to deaths;
now ranked as the fifth leading cause of death in the world.
Objective: -To determine the magnitude of overweight and associated factors among
adolescents in high schools of Addis Ababa, 2014.
Methods: - Cross-sectional study was conducted from Feb 20 to Mar 10, 2014 among
adolescents in high schools in Addis Ababa. A total of 446 students were selected from private
and government high schools using a multi-stage sampling procedure. Self-administered
questionnaires were used to collect demographic, socio-economic, dietary, physical activity and
nutritional knowledge data. Then data were entered using EpiData version 3.1.and analyzed
using SPSS vrison16.0. BMI-for-age was calculated using WHO AnthroPlus programs. Bivariate
logistic regressions analyses were employed to identify associated variables with overweight and
multi-variable logistic regression analysis was employed to identify independent predictors of
overweight. All statistical tests were considered significant at p-value<0.05.
Result: -The prevalence of overweight and obesity in this study was 10.3% and 4.9%
respectively. Overweight among adolescents in private high schools 13.8% was higher than those
in governmental 7% (P-value=0.008). There were more females overweight 17.2% and obese
10.3% students than males 4.5% and 0.4% respectively (p-value<0.001). In addition, high SES,
using >3 regular meals/day, consumption of sweet food, high PA, spent ≥3 hours/day using
TV/computer and nutritional knowledge were independent predictors of overweight.
Conclusion and recommendation: - Findings revealed that more than one-tenth of adolescents
in high school of Addis Ababa were overweight; factors of overweight among adolescents aged
13-19 years in the study area stem basically from the life style of adolescents. Therefore, public
health plan of action to curb overweight among high schools adolescents is urgently needed in
order to reduce future complication of overweight in Addis Ababa.
