Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

Factors Associated with Childhood Obesity in Andalusia (Spain)

¹Department of Public Health, Andalusian School for Public Health, Escuela Andaluza SA Public Health Observatory, Cuesta 4-18080, Granada, Spain

²Department of Epidemiology, CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health (CIBERESP), Spain

³Health Research Institute, Granada, Spain

*Corresponding Author:

José-Juan Sánchez-Cruz
Department of Public Health
Andalusian School for Public Health
Escuela Andaluza SA Public Health Observatory
Cuesta 4-18080, Granada, Spain
Tel: 34670947101
E-mail: josejuan.sc@gmail.com

Received Date: July 02, 2015 Accepted Date: July 28, 2015 Published Date: August 03, 2015

Citation:Sánchez-Cruz J, Pérez MJS, Fernández LG, Riola OR (2015) Factors Associated with Childhood Obesity in Andalusia (Spain). J Child Adolesc Behav 3:232. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000232

Copyright: ©Sánchez-Cruz JJ, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Background: We studied the prevalence of overweight and obesity in children from Andalusia, the southernmost county of Spain. A broad range of potential risk factors, covering lifestyles like physical exercise, eating habits and sleeping hours; individual characteristic such as age of the child and gender, as well as socio-economic and environmental factors, are considered to provide an analysis of the current situation, and enable subsequent development of counteracting programs. Methods: We analysed data from 2,325 resident children in Andalusia aged 8-15 years from 1999 to 2007. Explorative analysis was carried out to identify key features and logistic regression models were used to quantify possible relations of overweigh/obesity with potential risk factors. Results: Results based on logistic regression models confirm significant relations of overweight/obesity with age (odds ratio [OR]=0.76; 95% confidence interval [CI]=(0.73,0.79)) and gender (OR=1.84; CI=(1.53, 2.22) for boys). Physical activity, sleeping hours and good diet habits related to an increase of milk and yogurt consumption decreased the risk of overweight and obesity. Conclusion: The prevalence of overweight/obesity in children aged 8-15 years in Andalusia in 2007 was 29.8% (95% CI=(26.71, 31.93)), being in agreement with other studies of developed countries. None of the environmental factors considered were significant in combination with individual factors.

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