Childhood Obesity and Healthy Weight Program among Primary School Children

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Community Health Nursing and Environment -Faculty of Nursing, Ain Shams University-Cairo-Egypt.

Abstract

Background: Obesity has well documented adverse physical health consequences in both
childhood and adulthood. Childhood obesity tends to persist until adulthood and thus potentially
represents the beginning of a lifetime chronic process leading to different patterns and magnitudes
of impairment in relation to the health-related quality of life. Over 10 percent or 3.6 million of
Egyptian children are considerably overweight. It's particularly troubling because the extra pounds
often start children on the path to health problems that were once considered adult problems:
diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Aim of the Study: assess the effect of primary
prevention program of obesity among primary school children through: assessing knowledge &
practices of primary school children related to obesity. Subjects and Methods: Setting: The study
was conducted in four primary governmental school of El-Salam city, Cairo governorate Size: the
sample composed of 144 primary school children chosen randomly through multistage sampling.
Tools: Different tools were used for data collection of study and it was written in simple language
to suit the understanding level of the studied primary school children First tool: Structured
interviewing questionnaire, second tool: Anthropometric Measurements, physical assessment sheet
Results: clarified that only few percentage of primary school children had good Knowledge
preprogram while this improved to more than one third post program implementation related to their
total knowledge about childhood obesity, there was highly statistically significant difference in post-
program compared to pre-program according to their total practice related to childhood obesity.
Conclusions: primary school children improved their knowledge and practice regarding childhood
obesity after program implementation. Recommendation: primary prevention program must be
provided for all primary school children to prevent childhood obesity risks.

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