Relationship Between Obesity-related Knowledge And Behaviors Among Primary And Middle School Students In Nanjing

Objective To investigate the status about obesity-related knowledge and behaviors,and to analyze the relationship between knowledge and corresponding behaviors of obesity among primary and middle school students in Nanjing and to provide references for health education and intervention of obesity prevention among students.Method Totally 48 schools were selected from 8 districts in Nanjing with multi-stage proportionate cluster random sampling and investigated with questionnaire survey and physical examination in September 2013.A total of 9426 students were involved in analysis.The contents of the survey include:the general conditions,obesity-related knowledge and behavior factors of the students.Descriptive analyses were performed on students’ general conditions.The Pearson chi-square tests were used to compare the proportions of the obesity-related knowledge and behaviors among different characteristics.Logistic regression analyses were used to analyze the effects of obesity-related knowledge on primary and middle school students’ corresponding obesity-related behaviors.Results The proportion of students knew "Obesity hurts body health","It is wrong to think that obesity in childhood wouldn’t go on in adulthood","Physical activity can lose weight","TV viewing or computer use can lead to overweight","Soft drinks can lead to overweight","Western fast food can lead to overweight" were 82.2%,68.1%,81.1%,33.0%,74.2%and 82.8%.The proportion of physical inactive,prolonged sedentary time,excessive intake of soft drinks,excessive intake of western fast food in students were 49.9%,4.4%,10.4%and 9.5%.Among students of different grade,gender,parental education and family population,their obesity-related knowledge and behaviors were different(P<0.05).Logistic regression analysis showed that for students,knowing "Physical activity can lose weight" had lower proportion of physical inactivity(OR=0.79,95%CI=0.71-0.87),knowing "TV viewing or computer use can lead to overweight" had lower proportion of prolonged screen time(OR=0.60,95%CI=0.48-0.76),knowing "Soft drinks can lead to overweight" had lower proportion of excessive intake of soft drinks(OR=0.57,95%CI=0.49～0.65)for students,knowing "Western fast food can lead to overweight"had lower proportion of excessive intake of western fast food(OR=0.43,95%CI=0.36～0.50).Conclusion Awareness of obesity knowledge have influences on students’ health behaviors.Specific health education on obesity should be promoted among the students to let students improve obesity knowledge and take healthy behaviors.