Analyzing the adolescents’ impaired physical health: prevalence and associated factors in more than 100,000 Brazilian schoolchildren

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Introduction: Despite the vast evidence on different risk factors and their associations with behaviours that affect the development of young people, there is still a gap in the literature, the evidence bases that ad-dresses the components of health in an integral way. Objective: The present study aims to propose a combined indicator with the intention of concatenating risk behaviours into a single primary outcome, called Health Impaired Physics, and after that, identify socioeconomic indicators that can help to understand how this commitment affects the Brazilian students. Methods: This is a transversal-secondary analysis study of a Brazilian public database (National School Health Survey). The data are available from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (https://www.ibge.gov.br/). We selected the information about physical activity, nutritional status perception, and “effort to change weight” from 108778 schoolchildren aged between 11 and 18 years. After proposing the “impaired physical health” variable, we use the Poisson logistic regression with p<0.05 of acceptable significance. Results: Impaired physical health was adopted based on the following composition and criteria: negative classification of physical activity, poor perception of nutritional status and lack of effort to change weight. Individual characteristics (gender and race), food (smoking and drug consumption), family (e.g. not living with parents), phone use and geographic characteristics showed a significant association with the prevalence of impaired physical health. Conclusion: Collectively, our evidence reinforces that physical health impairment is influenced by several factors, including lifestyle, family and demographic context, and technology use. This study provides important information for managers in planning efficient public policies to promote health for this population, especially in intervention in the social context.