An examination of obesity frequency and its affecting factors of the students of high schools in the Elazig city center

Obesity is an important problem that affects 25-30 % of the children and adolescents. Its prevalence is increasing all over the world and particularly in the developed countries. This study seeks to find the frequency of obesity and its real factors of the students at the secondary schools in the Elazığ city center.28 out of 35 high schools in the Elazığ city center, for which the necessary permissions were obtained from the national education board, are included for the research. One class from each grade (9, 10, 11, 12) was selected randomly from each school participated in the study. 2201 out of 2722 students were reached for the research. The questionnaire which contains some questions related to the general demographic features and an obesity factors prepared by the researcher, is applied to the surveyee face to face. The researcher also measured the height and weight of the students participated in the stuy.The average age of the surveyees is 16.30±1.28 and 55.3% consists of boys while 44.7% is girls. The 6.0 % of the students? fathers are not litereate while this rate for mothers is 22.0 %. 85.6 %of the students live in the city center. The obesity is found to be 13.5% among the students. Obesity in the male surveyees is 13.2 % while in the female students this number is 0.3 % (p<0.05). A significant relation was achieved between BMI values and male students. Relation was achieved between BMI and family income, family education level, family type, spending time for television and computer.The relation was not significant. There was a significant relation between BMI and cyling, have breakfast, consumed food and drink types from the canteen, consumption of milk and milk products per week.In conclusion the obesity prevalence for male students in the high school in Elazig City Center has been found as significantly. As a prevention method, the increase in weight should be controlled in the adolescent period. Health should be promoted by school education about adequate and balanced nutrition, physical activity, spending time for television and computer.Keywords: obesity, adolescent, students, nutrition