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- Original Article Study on the nutritional health status of preschool children and its influencing factors
- Sook Bang, Young Ok Kim, Hae Kyung Jung, Seung Hyun Han
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Epidemiol Health 1985;7(2):284-298
DOI: https://doi.org/
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Abstract
The primary objectives of this field appraisal were i) measuring nutritional health status of preschool children under age six ii) identification of responsible factors determining the variation of nutritional status among the target population. In measuring the nutritional health status of preschool children under six, three categories of nutritional indicators such as anthropometric index, biochemical index and clinical signs of deficiency were studied. To identify the responsible factors determining the nutritional health status of the target group, two statistical analysis had been carried out, initially, variation of nutritional health status has been examined by various explanatory factors. The next analysis examined the relative importance of each variable in explaining the variation of nutritional health status using multiple regression analysis. A summary of the findings are as follows; i) concerning the nutritional health status of the study population, this study indicated that contrary to the popular belief that no nutrition problem exists in Korea, there was considerable “under nutrition” among preschool children. The incidence of growth failure based on weight, height and skinfold-thickness was 12.8%, 10.5% and 15.1% respectively. Anemia among them was 7.1% (Hb below 11g/100ml). Clinical signs of Vitamin B2 deficiency was 7.9%. In explaining the variation of nutritional health status between individuals the study indicated that: 1) in examining the variation of nutritional health status of preschool children, there was significant variation of growth (especially weight) founded by the nutrient intake level. Nutritional health status of preschool children varied not only by sex of child, birth interval, birth order, mothers age at birth, but also genetic factor such as hight of father and by the socioeconomic factors of the household. 2) In case of multiple regression analysis using weight-for-age as dependent variable, household socio-economic status and parental factors appear to be the most important factors. The second most significantly factors were dietary related variables such as duration of breast feeding and dietary and mothers time alloted to child care. The above finding lead us to a nutrition policy implication that there should be better nutritional care program for the preschool children by the nutrition education for the mother.
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