Prevalence of Obesity among School Going Adolescents in Urban and Rural Areas of District Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India

• Main Authors: S. K. Raghav, S. Rastogi, N. Singh, C. Maheshwari, S. Davey, P. Pandey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine 2020-07-01
• Series: Healthline
• Subjects: adolescents; obesity; overweight; rural; urban
• Online Access: http://www.healthlinejournal.org/index_pdf/307.pdf
• ISSN: 2229-337X; 2320-1525

Introduction : The present century had noticed a rapid transition from undernourished to overweight and obesity. This transition was initially reported in developed countries but now this phenomenon has been noticed in developing countries. Objective: The study was conducted to assess the knowledge about the obesity among school going adolescents and to find out the sex wise and area wise relationship about the knowledge of obesity among the studied adolescents. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 640 school going adolescents in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India from January 2019 to February 2019. Multistage sampling technique was used for enrolment of the study subjects. A pre-designed and pre-tested questionnaire was used. Body weight and height were recorded for calculating Body Mass Index (BMI). The WHO BMI-for-age cut off classification of adolescents was used for the assessment of overweight and obesity. Results: A total of 640 adolescents participated in the study. Overweight and obese were more prevalent among male adolescents from urban area schools. In the present study, the overall prevalence of obese in rural area is 3.9% and overall prevalence of obese in urban area is 11.8%. The knowledge about hazards of obesity is statistically significant (p<0.05) sex wise and area wise. Majority of the participants were aware about the obesity causing foods, preventive measures related to obesity and activities related to obesity in both rural and urban area schools. Conclusion: The present study pointed towards the rise in prevalence of overweight and obesity especially in male adolescents belonging to urban area schools thereby indicating the need to provide comprehensive targeted interventions for adolescents.