Household food insecurity and nutritional status of schoolchildren in Kuantan Pahang

Abstract

The emerging problem of childhood obesity and food insecurity in Malaysia is now becoming a major public health concern. There is a clear need to understand the prevalence of childhood obesity and its relationship with food security status; however, the understanding of this phenomenon is still lacking due to scarcity of local data. To address this gap, this study was undertaken to explore the prevalence of obesity among schoolchildren and to investigate its relationship with socio-demographic and economic characteristics. This study adopted a different approach in the methodology whereby, the entire database was linked to Geographical Information System (GIS) to create maps. In this cross sectional study, weight and height was measured in the sample of schoolchildren aged 7 and 13 years. Questionnaire was used to collect socio-economic and demographic information. The household food security phone call survey was done in 128 selected households. The validated Radimer/ Cornell Food insecurity questionnaire was utilized to assess food insecurity. This study revealed that the prevalence of obese, overweight, underweight, stunting, and wasting were 14.9%, 11.2%, 9.4%, 8.6% and 7.2% respectively. This study found that, schoolchildren living in large household size were two times higher to be overweight/obese (OR=1.785, b=0.58, p=0.04). The findings from mapping schoolchildren nutritional status revealed that, there were clusters pattern of overweight/obesity found in Kuala Kuantan (urban area). Likewise, the distribution of stunting was seen to be overlapping with the distribution of overweight/obesity children. About 23% of the households were food secure, while 77% experienced food insecurity. Out of food insecure category, 52% were household food insecure, 9% women were individual food insecure and 16% fell into the child hunger category. This study also revealed that, the proportions of overweight/obese children among food insecure households were higher compared to food secure groups. However, this study failed to prove the direct association between food insecurity and obesity. The results warrant the need for further investigation to identify the possible complex interaction of food insecurity and childhood obesity. Health intervention programmes should include food security into consideration based on its adverse implications towards public health.