Nutritional status and associated factors among high school adolescents in Debre Tabor Town, South Gondar Zone, Northcentral Ethiopia

BACKGROUND: Adolescents are among the nutritionally vulnerable group due to their nutritional demand for pubertal spurt. At this age, adequate nutrition, nutritional education, and counseling are very important to halt the consequence and its impact on this segment of the population. So, the aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and its associated factors of nutritional status among high school adolescents aged 10–19 years in Debre Tabor Town, South Gondar Zone, and North central Ethiopia. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted from September to October 2017. A total of 349 high school adolescents were selected by using simple random sampling. Data were collected through face to face interview and physical measurement. The data were entered into Epi info version 7 software and then exported into SPSS version 20 software for further analysis. A p-value < 0.2 was used to select independent variables for multivariable logistic regression. A p-value ≤0.05 was used to declare the statistical significance. Also, odd ratios were calculated with a 95% of the confidence interval to check the existence of the association. RESULT: A total of 327 adolescents participated in this study with the overall response rate of 93.69%. The magnitude of stunting and thinness was 15% (95% CI: 11, 19) and 4.9% (95% CI: 2.4, 7.4) respectively. Sex (AOR: 2.24, 95% CI: 1.15, 4.36), residency (AOR: 2.48, 95% CI: 1.28, 4.82), and family size (AOR: 3.41, 95% CI: 1.65, 7.05) were the associated factors for stunting. Residence (AOR: 3.67, 95% CI: 1.16, 11.56), and living away from the family (AOR: 4.37, 95% CI: 1.20, 15.95) were the associated factors for the development of thinness. CONCLUSION: Stunting is a mild public health problem but not thinness. Sociodemographic variables were the determinant factors for the development of stunting and thinness. To halt this, integrated adolescent related school and nutrition services is very important with adequate and quality food access to adolescents. In addition to this the government shall have to increase the access of education.