Community Beliefs, Attitude and Awareness about Child Obesity

Abstract

Child obesity is prevalent in our society and people are not aware of its consequences and health hazards. Not much work has been done in Pakistan to counter the problem. The objective of this study was to determine the people’s awareness about the consequences and health hazards of child obesity. We undertook a comprehensive cross sectional study to assess parents awareness about short term and long term health, psychological and social consequences of child obesity. A child obesity awareness questionnaire (COAQ) was given to parents to assess the level of awareness and their beliefs about causes and consequences of child obesity. The demographic details shows that out of 300 subjects bulk of subjects were female (57%), parents and (43%) male parents. The mean age of female subjects was 37.2 years and that of male subjects was 39.2 years and for both female and male subjects the mean age was 38.2 years with an age range 29–54 years; and the education level indicates that out of 300 subjects 9%completed primary school education, 18% completed high school education, while 67% were graduates and 6% of subjects were postgraduates. The majority of subjects (63%) had three or more children where as 37% of subjects have less than three children. Survey data also reveals that the parents where (n=300) were aware of common health consequences of obesity like heart disease (94%), less physical activity (92%) but they were less aware about behavioral consequences like socially isolated (10%), body image disturbance (25%), learning difficulties (0%). They were least informed about less known health hazards such as diabetes mellitus (0%) arthritis (12%) fertility problems (0%) and cancer (1%). Finally it was observed that people are less aware of health, social and mental issues of child obesity and it corresponds to the fact that people saw obesity as sign of health and child obesity problem as a family rather than social issue.