THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HEALTH LITERACY AND OVERWEIGHT AMONG SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN IN MUEANG SAMUTPRAKAN DISTRICT, SAMUT PRAKAN PROVINCE

Abstract

This study is mixed methods research. The objective was to study the prevalence ofoverweight children, study the relationship between health literacy and obesity and developingguidelines for the prevention and correction of overweight school-aged children in MueangSamut Prakan district Samut Prakan province. The population to study the prevalence ofoverweight children was student health information and the samples was data on growthassessment of students aged 9–14 years who were overweight. The tools used in the studywere: student health record form, academic year 2020-2022. The population to study therelationship between health literacy and obesity was overweight children between the ages of9-14. The 150 samples selected on a voluntary and stratifi ed random. The population to studydeveloped guidelines for the prevention and correction of overweight school-aged childrenwere parents, teachers, public health personnel and public sector networks. The samples byppurposive sampling of 10 voluntarily selected subjects. The tools used in the study were:Health literacy assessment form for obesity prevention for students aged 9-14 years of the
health service support division ministry of public health has alpha coeffi cient confi dence valuewas 0.862. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage andcorrelation analysis by Pearson’s Correlation Coeffi cient statistics and analyzing qualitativedata on content analysis.
The results of the study of the prevalence and tendency of overweight childrenin school districts rresponsible for 3 schools found that: There are 890 school-age childrenaged between 9-14 years old. There were 228 people who were overweight, representing
25.61%, divided into overweight 6.29 percent, Onset of obesity 11.57 percent and 7.75 percentobesity. The schools with the highest number of overweight, overweight and obese childrenwere Praphamontree 2 schools (28.4, 6.4 and 15.2 percent) and the children with the highestobesity were Municipal School (8.28 percent). The result of the relationship betweenhealth literacy and obesity found that health cognition (r=0.488, p-value =0.007), healthcommunication ((r= 0.775, p-value =0.003), making the right discrimination decisions (r= 0.731,p-value =0.01), there was a statistically signifi cant relationship with overweight among school-agedchildren (p<0.05). The guidelines for preventing and solving the problem of being overweightamong school-aged children, include 1) Student network partners create role models forhealthy teenagers, 2) organize positive motivational activities for students with obesity. Gettingfat and fat, 3) establishing a food control policy that affects health and obesity. 4)Parentnetwork affi liates support behavior change.5) survey health status and return data on schoolagechildren's overweight status to schools and communities every 3 months and 6) communitynetwork partners support resources for organizing community activities. The results of thestudy can be used to plan policies for relevant agencies so that school-aged children agedbetween 9-14 years have appropriate behaviors and physical health conditions.