The Knowledge, Attitude And Practice Of Six Cities’ Primary Teachers Towards Childhoodobesity In China

Objective To investigate the obesity related knowledge, attitude andpractice of primary teachers in six cities, to provide information fordeveloping childhood obesity prevention and intervention strategies.Methods A total of843teachers from six cities in china were collected bymulti-stage randomly clustering method. The self-administratedquestionnaire was used to collect information on the obesity relatedknowledge, attitude and practice. Results Above95%of teachers wereaware of12questions out of16questions. But the percentage of teachersaware of “Dietary Pagoda" was only42.4%; and only25%of them did notknow the roughage have more nutrition than refined grain. Teacherspreferred to get obesity related knowledge through experts lecture. Most ofteachers had a positive attitude towards the healthy lifestyle amongchildren. But some of them had negative attitude towards "should watchless TV","eating western-style fast food less as far as possible ". Morethan50%of primary school teachers thought that obese children were lazy,and not flexible in activity, slow response, bad figure, easy to get sick. The teachers had mainly neutral attitude towards character, self-confidence,academic performance, appearance, status, personality, popular;77%of theteachers considered that obese children were big eaters. More femaleteachers thought obese children were self-abased and had bad figuredifference than male teachers, the difference was statistically significant (p<0.05). Only40.9%of teachers did exercise every week.26.6%of themused to using” skipping main food” to control their body weight. There areless than50%teachers of the breakfast foods are abundant. Significantdifference in the attitude of sports ability, sports teachers, reaction speed,academic performance, appearance, body, health, personality, etc, towardsobese children was found among six cities teachers (p <0.05)Conclusion Teachers’ obesity related knowledge was good, but they werelack of correct attitude towards some problems. Some of them hadunhealthy behavior. A variety ways, such as expert lectures should beimplemented to disseminate obesity related knowledge among guide urbanteachers. Primary school teachers in6cities have some discriminationagainst obese children, which should be eliminate to help the obesechildren with good mental health.