An Evaluation of Obesity and Hypertension among Primary School Teachers in an Urban Region of South-South Nigeria

Abstract

Obesity is now recognized to be a problem of public health importance with consequences for health and well-being. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and association of obesity and hypertension among primary school teachers in Port Harcourt metropolis in Rivers State, Nigeria. In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, using a cluster sampling method, 400 primary school teachers were selected from public and private primary schools. Their so- cio-demographic data was collected using a self-adminis- tered questionnaire and anthropometric measurements were also obtained. The data was summarized using de- scriptive statistics and analysed using the Statistical Pack- age for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. The findings showed an extremely high prevalence of obesity as well as a high prevalence of hypertension among the teachers. The prevalence of general obesity using BMI was 80.8% and that of central (abdominal) obesity was 84.1%, 61.1% and 97.0% using waist circumference, waist-hip-ratio and waist-height-ratio respectively. The prevalence of hyper- tension was 27.4%. Using the chi-squared test of associ- ation, a statistically significant association was found only between waist-hip-ratio and hypertension. Both obesity and hypertension were prevalent among teachers in this study. Obesity especially central obesity was also associated with negative health outcomes like hypertension. Urgent health education of teachers on the risk factors of hypertension and obesity so that they can avoid them and take respon- sibility for improving their health indices in this regard was recommended. Another recommendation is the incorpora- tion of weight reduction activities for teachers as part of the regular physical education programs. Keywords