IDENTIFY THE CONTRIBUTORY FACTORS AND PREVALENCE OF OBESITY AMONGCHILDREN IN SELECTEDSCHOOLS, PUDUCHERRY.

Abstract

Background: Nutritious foods help us to maintain good health. Consumption of healthy foods in a
balanced form help us to minimize the health-related problems. Obesity among children and
adolescents has adverse consequence onpremature mortality, and physical morbidity in adulthood and
is associated with impaired health during childhood. The risk factors of obesity and overweight
explored from different studies revealed that, the genetic history, physical activity, high birth weight,
and type of milk intake during infancy, morethan two hours of television watching per day, frequency
of regular meals and overweight of the parents. The purpose of the study was to identify the contributory
factors and prevalence of obesity among children
Objectives: To assess the level of obesity among selected school children at Puducherry. To identify
the contributory factors leading to obesity To associate the pretest level of obesity with selected
demographic variables of school children at Puducherry.
Materials And Methods: The quantitative research approach was selected and non-experimental
descriptive research design was used. The study was conducted among 1062 school children studying
8th and 9th standard in selected Government and Private schools at Puducherry In this study, cluster
sampling technique was used to select the schools and Non probability – convenient sampling technique
was used to assess the obesity. Totally six schools were selected and sampling frame was made. Data
collection tool was consisting of three sections and validated by the subject experts. Obtained ethical
approval to conduct the study
Results and conclusion: The prevalence of overweight and obesity was found to be 9.7% and 4.9%
respectively. Key contributory factors identified include genetic history, physical activity, birth weight,
milk type in infancy, television watching, meal frequency, and parental overweight.