Abstract

Background: Worldwide, obesity has been more than doubled since 1980 as per recent data. In the year 2014, it has been reported that more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and above, were overweight. Of these, over 600 million were obese which means that overall 39% of adults worldwide are either overweight or obese. Aims and Objectives: The aims and objectives of this study were to find the prevalence of overweight and obesity and factors associated with them among school children.
Materials and Methods: The present study was community-based cross-sectional study. The study was conducted between January 1 and March 31, 2014 in four schools of Satara district, Maharashtra. List of all government and private schools in Satara district was obtained, and four schools were selected by simple random sampling. Thus, a total of 90 students from each school were enrolled in the study, so final sample size was 360.
Results: Among 360 study participants, the prevalence of overweight was 9.16% and obesity was 2.5%. Of 185 boys and 175 girls, the prevalence of overweight and obesity was 12.97% in boys compared to 9.14% in girls. 14.04% of school students from private school was found overweight or obese compared to only 6.88% of students from government school. Family history of obesity, working status of mother, and less duration of sleeping have a direct relationship on childhood obesity. Conclusion: The findings of the present study showed that boys have more prevalence of overweight and obesity compared to girls. Private school-going children found more overweight and obese compared to government school-going children. Family history of obesity, working status of mother, and less duration of sleeping have a direct relationship on childhood obesity.