Health promoting lifestyle among secondary school students of government schools in Sandhikharka municipality

Abstract

Background: Health behaviours’ are most likely introduced in adolescence stage of life. Socio-demographic and socio-economic factors have found to influence health directly or indirectly. Therefore, study was conducted to assess the status of health promoting lifestyle among secondary school students of Government Schools as well as their associations with socio-demographic and socio-economic variables.Methods: The cross sectional study was performed among Government School students. Health promoting lifestyle proforma (HPLP) was prepared consisting of 2 parts, Part-I sociodemographic and socio economic characteristics and part-II health promoting lifestyle profile-II developed by Walker et al. was modified into Nepalese version. It consists of 46 items divided into 7 subscales (health responsibility, physical activity, food practices, spiritual growth, self-concept, inter personal relations and stress management). Descriptive statistics was used to describe HPLP. Data was analyzed by using SPSS. Chi-square test was used to identify the associations.Results: The overall HPLP mean score of respondents was 2.99±0.27, with the highest mean scores for spiritual growth (3.2±0.28) and interpersonal relations (3.16±0.28) and the lowest mean score for physical activity (2.80±0.25) and nutrition (2.84±0.29). Only, Occupational status of mother were found to be significantly associated with the Health-Promoting Lifestyle.Conclusions: This study showed that the status of health promoting lifestyle among secondary level students was good with ample room for improvement as adoption of sedentary lifestyle is increasing remarkably. Therefore, health education and promotion programs might be prerequisite to promote the health of Youths.