Determination of the frequency and the affecting factors of obesity in school age children and adolescents in a rural area in sivas province

Objectives: Our aim was to investigate the prevalence of and the risk factors associated with obesity among adolescents and children between the ages of 6-18 years in a rural area in Sivas province in Turkey. Materials and Methods: The universe of our descriptive cross-sectional study was consisting of 485 students who educate in Sivas Akincilar district. The study was carried out on 1-8 June 2018 and was conducted in 449 students who accepted to participate and met the criteria of inclusion in the study. The height, weight, waist and hip circumference of the children whose family signed the ethical consent form were measured by researcher and the standardized questionnaire consisting of 24 questions was conveyed to the parents. It was used Olcay Neyzi standards (created by the data of the national study) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC standards in order to evaluate the measurements. The data were uploaded SPSS program. Shapiro Wilk, Chi-square, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis, Kappa, Pearson correlation and Roc analyzes were performed. The results were evaluated at 95% confidence interval and p<0.05 at significance level. Results: Of the participants, 45.21% were girls and 54.78% were boys. The ages of the students varied between 6-17 years and the mean age was 11.82 ± 0.13 years. According to the CDC standards, body mass index percentages were 3.34% weak, 75.50% normal, 13.80% overweight and 7.34% obese. 55.00% of the families of obese children and 87.80% of the families of overweight children thought that their children were in normal weight. When the children's weight and parents' weight assessment of their children were compared, a significant difference was found between both CDC and Olcay Neyzi standards (p<0.001(CDC); p<0.001(Olcay Neyzi)). The cut-off value of the students' waist-to-height ratio was calculated as 0.46 for our study (CDC sensitivity %86.4, specificity %78.1; Olcay Neyzi sensitivity %89.1; specificity %74.3). There was no significant difference between the weight of the children and playing with their phone/tablet before going to bed (p=0.191(Olcay Neyzi); p=0.331(CDC)). Conclusion: In conclusion, we found the prevalence of obesity was significantly increased also in rural areas and the awareness of families about their children's weight was low. We concluded that the family-oriented approach should be strengthened in the fight against childhood obesity and that the number of trainings for parents should be increased. © 2019 Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University. All rights reserved.