Abstract:
Background: Adolescence is a period of intense physical, psychosocial and cognitive
development and the second to infancy at which highest rate of physical growth occur. So
Adolescent need to have good quantity and quality nutrient to cope with this rapid growth
and other health risk which increase nutritional demand. However there is limited study and
attention for adolescent nutrition; especially in developing country where the demographic
weight of adolescent is significant.
Objective: The Objective of this study is to assess nutritional status and associated factors
among in school adolescents in chiro town.
Method and Material: Cross-sectional quantitative study design was employed from
November 04- 13, 2013. Data were collected using structured questionnaires from 291
adolescent students. Anthropometric measurement (weight and height) was taken by trained
nurses. Data were entered to Epidata Version 3.1 .Then the data was Analysed using SPSS
version 16.0. Descriptive statistics was used to show the prevalence of nutritional status and
other independent variable characteristic. Bivariate and multivariate binary logistic
regression analysis was used to identify predicatorsof nutritoinal status of adolecents by
controlling the effect of possible confounders.
Results: Out of 319 selected sample 291(91.2%) were participated in the study. This study
revealed that 24.4% and 7.2% of adolescents were found to be underweight and stunted
respectively. Socio-demographic factors like being early adolescents (10-14 years)
[AOR=2.06, CI= 1.02, 4.16], male [AOR= 3.91 CI=1.7, 8.98], chewing chat [AOR=2.45
CI=1.07, 5.64], having fathers with no formal education [AOR=8.52 CI=2.055, 35.36] were
assocaited with being underweight. Hand washing “sometimes”after toilet [AOR= 3.24 CI=
1.01, 10.37] was found to be predictor of stunting.
Conclusion and Recommendation-The prevalence of underweight was high one out of
three among adolescents but the prevalence of stunting was low one out of thirteen. Factrors
associated with underweight were sex, age and chat chewing of adolescents, educational
status of father and sex of household head.
