Nutritional status and associated factors in children aged 15-17 years in a suburb in Vietnam

A double nutritional burden (DBM) has increased rapidly in Vietnam. Finding a solution to reduce the rates of overweight & obesity and thinness was necessary, especially at the age of 15-17 years. This study aimed to investigate nutritional status and elucidate the associated factors in children aged 15-17 years in the suburban of Vietnam. A cross-sectional study was carried out from November to December 2019 in Vietnam. Total of 424 students aged 15-17 years (153 boys and 271 girls) from Hong Thai Highschool using a randomized sampling method. The nutritional status of studied subjects was determined based on the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria of sex and age specific BMI cut-off points for children between 5 and 19 years old (2007). Rates of overweight and obesity was 8.96%, thinness was 8.02%, there was a statistically significant difference between boys' and girls' group (p=0.02). Correlation between BMI and WC, HC showed that WC or HC could be another indicator to determine the nutritional status of children. Having milk or a light meal before going to bed was also found to decrease the risk of being overweight by 66.4% (OR = 0.336, 95% CI: 0.116 – 0.972). Eating as much as possible increases the risk of overweight and obesity 2.2 times (p=0.017). Moreover, fast food consumption and physical activity time were no significant difference between the obesity & overweight and non-overweight groups. Especially, compared with the walking group, the group with adults taken had the risk of overweight and obesity 14 times higher, the group traveling by motorbike had the risk of overweight and obesity 5.056 times higher (with p=0.018 and p=0.04, respectively). The results suggest that there was the DBM for children in suburban, nutrition status was not similar among boys and girls. Public health programs should therefore be developed or improved in order to promote good eating habits and physical activity, especially how to move to school among children in Vietnam.