International Union for Circumpolar Health Ministry of Public Health and Social Development of RF Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences Medical Polar Fund “Science” The Northern Forum

Abstracts

Child health. Women`s health

Objective – The objective was to examine the prevalence of overweight and obesity among school-children in Greenland and the accuracy of self reported measures of height and weight.

Study design and methods – The study Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) is a WHO collaborative study which has been carried out in Greenland in 2002 with a participation of 2.010 pupils of 11-17 years of age. Self-reported height and weight from this survey was used to calculate body mass index (BMI) and the prevalence of overweight and obesity were assessed by use of internationally recommended cut points by Tim Cole et al . The accuracy of the self reported measures of height and weight was validated by examination of 125 school-children.

Results – The study found that the prevalence of overweight among male Greenlandic school-children was 20.2% (95% CI: 16.9-23.5) and 18.5 (95% CI: 15.4-21.6) for female students. The prevalence of obesity was found to be 3.4% (95% CI: 1.9-4.9) and 1.0% (95% CI: 0.2-1.8) respectively (figures 1 and 2). The classification of overweight and obese school-children on the basis of 1) measured BMI and 2) self reported BMI is illustrated by table 1. Sensitivity was 76%, which means that 76% of the individuals were classified correctly by means of self reported height and weight. Specificity was 95%, which was the proportion of normal weight individuals, who is classified correctly.

Conclusion – The proportion of overweight and obese school-children is similar to the ones found in other countries. The use of BMI as an indicator of overweight among Inuit can be debated but is argued to be essential to determine how Greenland is developing with respects to the global obesity epidemic. Analyses of sensitivity and specificity on self-reported anthropometic data concludes that the use of BMI by self-reported height and weight is a valid method of monitoring the development of BMI among Greenlandic adolescents.

Note. Abstracts are published in author's edition

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Last update: 06-Jul-2012 (11:52:05)