Journal of Obesity & Eating Disorders

Prevalence and Associated Factors Affecting Overweight and Obesity among First Year Medical Students in Dire Dawa University, Eastern Ethiopia

Introduction: Overweight and obesity becomes serious public health problem across the world. Regarding World Health Organization (WHO) report of 2018 about 39% and 13% of world population are at risk overweight and obesity respectively. Globally about 2.8 million deaths are caused by overweight and obesity. Countries annually spent 2.1 trillion dollar budget to reduce obesity related disease. Over weight and obesity reduce total Growth Demotic Product (GDP) of the country by 2.8% globally. Overweight and obesity is affected by different socio-economical factors.

Methods and material: Institutional based cross sectional study was conducted among 210 medical students in Dire Dawa University. Statistically determined study participants were selected by simple random sampling method. Pretested questioners were used to assess demographic and socio-economical factors. Data was entered using Epi data version 3.0 and analyzed by using SPSS version 23. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify factors related with dependent variable. P-value less than 0.05 was set as statistically significant.

Results: More than half (51.4%) participants were male and majority of participants were found in 19 years old. About 59.5% of participants live in subtropical climate and 39% of participants sometimes miss breakfast. About 48.6%participants had experience performing moderate exercise daily. Prevalence of overweight and obesity was 5.2 and 0.5 respectively. Nearly half 100 (47.8%) of obese participants eat breakfast, lunch and dinner regularly. Climatic condition and experience of eating breakfast had statistically significant relation with overweight and obesity.

Conclusion: Even if overweight and obesity is serious health issue across the world, overweight and obesity was less prevalent among University students in Ethiopia. Parents average income, gender and climatic condition of respondent had statistically significant association with overweight and obesity whereas snack intake, physical activity, alcohol intake didn’t show statistically significant association with overweight and obesity.

Author(s): Wubshet Mogess

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