Nutritional Status among Adolescent Girls in Rural Areas of Tirupati – A Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Adolescent is the period of the life between the ages of 10-19 years. Adolescence is time to learn and adopt healthy habits to avoid many health and nutritional problems later in life. Objective of this study is to assess the nutritional status of adolescent girls by anthropometric measurements and to determine the association between different individual and family level factors with under nutrition. Methods: It is a community based cross-sectional study conducted among adolescent girls of age between 10-19 years in rural areas of Tirupati. The study sample was 188. BMI for age 11 years (17.1% vs 0%) and who are not doing regular physical activity (22.3% vs 9.2%). Multivariate binary logistic regression showed socioeconomic status, family size and physical activity are significant predictors of thinness. Conclusions: It can be concluded from this study that thinness was significantly high among adolescent girls with family size >5, who attained menarche at >11 years and who does not have the habit of doing regular physical activity.