A Nutritional Status Survey And Health Intervention Of Preschool Children In Shanghai Changshou Road Community

Background:Overnutrition represents nutritional and metabolic abnormalities duo to excessive intake of some kinds of nutrients, usually shown as overweight and obesity. According to the relevant national report in2005, the prevalence of overweight and obesity of children and teenagers in some big coastal cities was increased to14.1%～19.3%and6.0%～13.2%respectively. Among these, the rate of overweight of the preschool children in Shanghai reached15.1%, among which include6.9%of obesity respectively which is still increasing year by year. Recently in developed countries, the problem of obesity in children has become a focus of both medical field and public’s attention. Because same as the malnutrition, children in obesity duo to overnutrition affects the proper growth of children and teenagers which will do harm to their health.The emergence and development of children’s obesity successively follows:energy intake, energy consumption, energy storage, body fat accumulation, physiological mechanisms of obesity which is influenced by both inheritance and the susceptibility of environmental factors. The susceptibility is determined by the inheritance while whether one will become obese depends on the environmental factors. In recent years, with the process of rapid urbanization, industrialization and modernization, some environmental factors are increasing the prevalence of obesity in children in terms of the following ways:1. High-glucose-fat diet;2. Lack of physical activities;3. Lifestyle from movement to quietude. In the meantime, people’s lack of knowledge of nutrition and health, children’s bad dietary and living behaviors as well as various bad social factors(i.e. food marketing means only for profit,"fatness is health" and other out-of-date notions)etc,"obesity susceptibility environment" is composed of all these things. Objective:To know the nutritional status of preschool children in Changshou community, nutrition knowledge, attitude and practices of parents and employees of kindergartens and then conduct health intervention in order to decrease the overnutrition.Research methods:apply the stratified random sampling method, choose360children, their parents and kindergarten staff in Changshou community as samples. Conduct physical examinations, calculate the BMI index and set up health files; self-designed nutrition knowledge attitude and practices (K-A-P) questionnaire was used to investigate; for the parents, kindergarten staff and community inhabitants, a9-month health intervention was made; and statistical analyses were made after getting the results of body check and K-A-P questionnaire both before and after health intervention.Main results:Using WTO obesity diagnosis standard, measured by BMI index, we define18.1≤BMI<19.4as overweight, BMI≥19.4as obesity.Before health intervention:The average BMI index of preschool children in Changshou community is15.86±1.55.34children are overweight accounting for9.4%of all samples;21children are in obesity accounting for5.9%; the average score of nutrition K-A-P of the parents (360) and staff of kindergartens (40) is84.96points.After health intervention:The average BMI index of preschool children in Changshou community is15.26±1.5.25children are overweight accounting for7.1%of all samples;16children are in obesity accounting for4.5%; the average score of nutrition K-A-P of the parents (360) and staff of kindergartens (40) is92.27points.Conclusion:Nowadays with economic development of our country and the improvement of people’s living level in economy as well as the foreign diet structure mainly consist of animal food was introduced, excessive intake of some nutrients especially energy supply nutrients finally results in the overnutrition of the whole society especially the children and then the rate of overweight and obesity was risen year by year.According to the results, the proportion of preschool children in overweight and obesity in Changshou community is quite high. Children’s parents especially those aged or parents with low education level are lack of health knowledge. But most of the parents have positive attitude that they are willing to learn health knowledge, change their nutrition-related behaviors and cultivate good nutrition-related habits. We’ve conducted a9-month nutritional health education for the parents and kindergartens staff of preschool children in Changshou community, by means of that, the problem of preschool children in overweight and obesity was improved (P <0.01) and the nutrition knowledge, attitude and practices of parents and employees of kindergartens are improved as well (P<0.05)...