Obesity and Overweight among Students in Arabic Secondary Schools in Erbil City

A. Hussein, Kareema

	Obesity and Overweight among Students in Arabic Secondary Schools in Erbil City
nursing national Iraqi specility
Article 1, Volume 25, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 90-97
Author
Kareema A. Hussein
Abstract
Objective(s): The aim of the study was to identify the prevalence of overweight and obesity in adolescence and to estimate the effect of socio- demographic and health behaviors that predicting obesity in adolescents. Methodology: A cross-sectional descriptive study was being carried out at three public Arabic secondary schools in Erbil city from October 1st 2010 to January 30th 2011. A systematic randomly sample size of 461 students was selected. Results: In this study, the age of (46.2%, 122) of males students were ranged between (17- 18.9) years old com-pared to females students (74.1%, 146) their age ranged between (15 -16.9) years old. About (3.4%, 9) of males adolescents having overweight while all female adolescents were recorded as normal weight with significant asso-ciation between weight status and gender (p-value= 0.006). There were (0.5%, 1) overweight that watching TV during eating but (3.1%, 8) was did not watching TV during eating with significant association between weight status and watching TV during eating (p- value= 0.041). Recommendation: This study recommended placing posters throughout the school showing foods rich in vari-ous nutrients, healthy food tips in the school news letter for parents and educational activities with more orienta-tion about their diet and physical exercise at early ages involving the whole family to control the excess of weight. Keywords: anthropometric measure weight status, adolescent, physical inactivity, fast food.
Keywords
Overweight; Obesity; normal weight; adolescents; secondary school

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