Obesity and overweight among students in Arabic secondary schools in Erbil City

Abstract EN

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 stu-dents 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 sta-tus 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.