Prevalence of obesity and assessment of knowledge regarding hazards of obesity and its preventive measures among students of Government Science college of North Gujarat region, India

Background: Overweight and obesity are the fifth leading risk for global deaths. Objectives of this study was to know the prevalence of obesity and overweight among students and to assess the knowledge of these students pertaining to hazards of obesity and its preventive measures.Methods: The interventional study was undertaken among students of Government Science college of Vadnagar city, Gujarat during March to October 2019. A universal sampling method was employed, and all 473 students of college were included as subjects in the study. After obtaining informed written consent all students were examined and BMI were calculated. The prevalence of overweight and obesity were determined based on the International Obesity Task Force criteria and a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire was administered to each of the participants. Single educational training for 45 minutes was given to the students and their post- intervention knowledge for same was assessed after the training. Thus, collected data was analyzed using SPSS 17.Results: The prevalence of obesity and overweight was 8.0% and 15.0% respectively. Baseline knowledge of the students regarding hazards of obesity like hypertension, cancer, heart attack and diabetes mellitus was 16.1%, 18.2%, 20.1% and 21.8% respectively which was significantly increased to 96.8%, 97.9%, 99.4% and 99.6% respectively. Baseline knowledge of the students regarding preventive measure of obesity like avoiding junk food/ healthy diet, exercise and meditation was 17.1%, 19.7% and 11.4% respectively which was significantly increased to 97.7%, 98.9 and 99.2% respectively.Conclusions: Efforts should be directed towards educating these students regarding obesity to reduce the incidence of non-communicable diseases.