Prevalence of and risk factors for overweight among adolescents of a sub-metropolitan city of Nepal

BACKGROUND: Overweight is a global public health problem with increasing trend especially in middle to lower socioeconomic country like Nepal. The nutritional status of adolescents being shaped by socio-cultural, environmental, and economic factors has also been impacted by their food habits and level of physical activity. The current nutritional shift and rapid urbanization had emerged overweight as an additional burden for consistently prevalent undernutrition issues. So, the study aimed to identify the prevalence of and risk factors for overweight among school adolescents. METHODS: A cross-sectional analytical study was carried out among random sample of 279 adolescents from nine schools of a Sub-metropolitan city of Nepal. The anthropometric measurement of the height and the weight were taken as per the standard. The odds ratio with a 95% CI was calculated and a p-value of ≤0.05 was considered as cut off for statistical significance by fitting into the final multivariable logistic regression. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of overweight was obtained as 9.31% (95% CI: 6.40–13.3). The early aged adolescents were more overweight than compared to middle-aged adolescents (AOR: 0.27, CI: 0.028–2.67) and late adolescents (AOR: 0.66, CI: 0.068–6.44) respectively. Similarly, adolescents residing in rural areas had 0.35 (AOR = 0.33, CI: 0.030–3.71) odds of being overweight compared to their counterparts. Adolescents with sedentary behavior were about 4 times (AOR = 3.51, CI: 0.79–15.54) more likely of being overweight than their counterparts. CONCLUSION: Overweight among adolescents residing in urban areas has emerged as an alarming issue due to their unhealthy lifestyle habits. It is therefore pertinent to emphasize adolescents to maintain healthy weight status through health food habits and physical activity.