Assessment of School Age Children's Awareness about Obesity

Abstract

Background: Childhood obesity may have an adverse effect on health leading to increase physical and psychological health problems and reduced life expectancy due to lack of knowledge, practice and awareness about obesity among school children. Aim: to assess of school age children's awareness about obesity. Design: A descriptive design. Setting: 3 primary schools at Kom Hamada city affiliated to education directorate in El-Beheria governorate in Egypt. Subject: A systematic random sample from 540 primary school children at age of 6-12 years selected from three previously mentioned settings. Tools: 1- Structured questionnaire to assess children's' knowledge and reported practice. 2- Awareness scale to assess school children's awareness regarding obesity. Results: More than two thirds 65.5% of studied students had poor total knowledge about obesity, nearly three fourth 74.1 % of them had unsatisfactory level of total reported practice and less than half 46.3%of them had average total awareness. Conclusion: children had unsatisfactory knowledge and reported practice regarding obesity .There was positive correlation between children's knowledge and their awareness while negative correlation between children,s awareness and their reported practice .Recommendation: Educational program for school children and their mothers through planning and developing training programmes for acknowledgement of excess weight and an understanding of it's health consequances are essential first steps in tackling obesity.