Prevalence of Overweight and Associated Factors Among Adolescents in High Schools of Addiss Ababa Mulugeta Shegaze

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.