Overweight, obesity and associated factors among secondary school students in a northern city of Vietnam in 2011

Abstract

<span style="font-family:'Arial','sans-serif';font-size:10pt;">Overweight and obesity is an emerging public health problem among school<span style="background-color:#ffd700;">-</span>aged children in Bac Giang city in the Northen part of Vietnam recently. This study aims to identify overweight<span style="background-color:#ffd700;">-</span>obesity prevalence of secondary school children in this city and it’s associated factors. The study was a nested case control in a cross<span style="background-color:#ffd700;">-</span>sectional study design in 1528 secondary students selected from 4 secondary schools in 2 inner communes and 2 suburban communes of Bac Giang city, Vietnam. <i>Result</i>: Overweight preva<span style="background-color:#ffd700;">l</span>ence among secondary school students in Bac Giang was 6.7%, the prevalence of obesity was 2.0%. Overweight and obesity is more prevalence in male students, inner communes and students from family have higher income and higher food expense. Overweight and obesity was associated with higher energy intake, more fat consumption, having supplement meals and bedtimemeal, increased physical activities and increased sleep duration. <i>Conclusion</i>: Educa<span>tion campaign targeting reducing overweight</span> and obesity should target both parents about dietary adequacy and balance and children about more physical activities.</span

Short Sleep Duration and Childhood Obesity: Cross-Sectional Analysis in Peru and Patterns in Four Developing Countries

“…Similarly, the prevalence of overweight, for children aged five to sixteen years, was 6.6% in the year 2005 in India [3] ; Ethiopia reported a prevalence of 3.3% in school-aged children [4] . Lastly, in Vietnam there was a prevalence of 6.7% and 2.0% of overweight and obesity, respectively, among children aged eleven to fourteen years old [5] .…”

Overweight and obesity among Vietnamese school-aged children: National prevalence estimates based on the World Health Organization and International Obesity Task Force definition

“…Although most of the earliest studies which surveyed the prevalence of overweight and obesity among Vietnamese children was conducted in Ho Chi Minh City-a metropolitan city of Vietnam, numerous papers indicate different findings [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. The details describing the various findings of previous studies is shown in the S2 Table. During 2007-2010, it was evident that there was a low proportion of overweight (around 10%) and obese (less than 2%) children according to IOTF reference [13,16] and WHO Z-score [12] were reported while malnutrition of Vietnamese children also remained a significant issues at that time [12].…”

“…However, this report only provides information using the WHO Z-score criteria and does not provide information in regards to the sampling method [12]. There have been some studies which examine the obesity prevalence among Vietnamese children and adolescents currently [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. However, a major limitation of these studies is that the investigators used either WHO Z-score or IOTF reference for calculating and surveyed small districts of Vietnamese metropolis (mostly in Ho Chi Minh city) [13,14,[16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…Apart from assessing the prevalence, it is important to explore the diversity of factors which contribute to the onset of childhood obesity; this is necessary to establish an effective and longterm public health strategy for the prevention of this morbidity. For example, a higher socioeconomic status [4,[13][14][15]21], increase in sedentary lifestyles [4,13,15], unbalanced dietary habits [4,13,15,22], and parents' overweight/obesity status [4,13,21,23] are known contributors to an increased risk of childhood obesity in many countries. Whereas, the evidence of such association among Vietnamese children is quite limited.…”

“…All current studies on childhood obesity in Vietnam have indicated an association between overweight/ obesity risk and sexes [13-17, 19, 20]. Specifically, only three of these studies identified higher risk among children who live in urban areas, with wealthier families, are physical inactive, live with parental obesity, and have an unhealthy diet [13][14][15]. However, as mentioned previously, these surveys are conducted with miniscule sample size, in small areas and use different criteria for obesity diagnosis.…”