Physical Activity Levels And Junk Food Intake Among School Going Adolescents In A North Indian City

Introduction: Physical activity and diet go hand in hand for the maintenance of good health. This becomes even more important in school-going adolescent students as they are readily exposed to a wide variety of junk food items inside or around their school premises and lead increasingly sedentary lifestyles as they progress through their academics. Aim and Objective: Toassess the junk food intake and physical activity level among school-going adolescents. Material and Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 800 school-based adolescents aged 12 to 14 years at AMU High Schools, Aligarh. Students were asked about their physical activity and dietary habits by disseminating a self-reported questionnaire. The data were analyzed in SPSS version 20.0. Results: The majority of the adolescents had a moderate level of physical activity (53%), while 23% of the students had high and 24% had low physical activity levels. On the analysis of the students’ dietary habits, it was found that a staggering 70.75% of students had more than the recommended intake of junk food items. The association between physical activity and junk food intake was found to be significant. Conclusion: More emphasis should be given to limiting junk food intake, increasing healthy food intake, and motivating the students to be more physically active. This can be done by encouraging the family as well as teachers at the school level and creating more spaces for children to be physically active at the community level.

Determinants of Reproductive Tract Infection among married women in rural and peri-urban areas of Aligarh: A cross sectional Study

Background: Reproductive Tract Infections (RTI) have a direct impact on reproductive and child health through infertility, cancers, and pregnancy complications, and they have an indirect impact through their role in facilitating the sexual transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus. Objectives: To find the prevalence and determinants of RTI/STI among married women of reproductive age group in rural and peri-urban areas of Aligarh. Methods: The data were collected by using a pretested, semi-structured with both open and closed-ended questionnaire from 500 married women of reproductive age group. The collected data were analyzed using IBM SPSS 20.0 Proportion, frequencies, ?2, and logistic regression were used to interpret the data. Results: Prevalence of RTI/STI symptoms was found to (42.8%) in rural areas and 37.6 % in periurban areas. Strong association was found in study subjects having lower educational status, who were not using any contraceptive method, not following good menstrual hygiene, early marriage age had husband history of RTI/STI, had a history of abortion, had a history of violence, and increased parity. Conclusions: Prevalence of symptoms found to be associated with these females having low educational status, early age of marriage, high parity, partner history of reproductive Tract Infections, history of violence etc. So, there should be more focus on improvement in these factors to reduce the prevalence.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Literature on Covid-19 And Mental Health

Purpose: The present study analyzed the existing literature related to COVID 19 and Mental Health by using the technique of bibliometric analysis which may serve as guide-map for future researchers and policy makers. Method: Bibliometric analysis is conducted in the present study by using various techniques like cita-tion analysis, co-citation analysis, co-occurrence of keywords, thematic mapping by using visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer open-source software and R-based bibliometrix. Results: The study highlighted the most significant journals, authors, co-cited authors, institutions, key-words co-occurrence, and most cited articles in the area of COVID-19 and Mental Health on the basis of bibliometric analysis of 149 studies taken from the database of Scopus for the past three years (2020–first quarter of 2022). Also, authors identified few relevant themes such as Economic Effects of COVID-19, COVID-19 and its Impact on Healthcare workers, COVID-19 and its Impact on Patients and General Population as important emerging key areas for further research. Conclusion: We have highlighted significant citations, co-citations and keywords co-occurrence to summarize the literature. The present bibliometric study convincingly confirms the effect of COVID 19 pandemic on mental health and provides enough evidence to advocate formulation of strategies to tackle mental health issues.

Documenting catastrophic spending on health by migrant slum population

Background: India ranks among the bottom five countries in public health spending. Out of pocket spending of households on healthcare is almost 70% of income and reimbursement in any form availed by households whose members are employed in the formal sector is negligible. Objectives: To determine the usual source of medical care opted for by the study population. To find out the illness pattern and its age/sex distribution in the study population. To find out the expenditure incurred on illness and its source of procurement by the study population. Methodology: 52.42% urban Aligarh resides in slums. A cross sectional study was done to study the newer slum pockets. 3409 households with a population of 16,978 were studied with the help of pretested questionnaire; SPSS 20 was used for statistical analysis. Results: In our study, we found that almost all the households suffered from catastrophic health expenditure. The study population, which was already vulnerable owing to their low socio-economic and migrant status was further forced into poverty and indebtedness on account of expenditure on illness. Conclusions: National health financing systems should be designed to protect households from financial catastrophe, by reducing out-of-pocket spending.