Background: Lifestyle diseases are now the major causes of premature morbidity, mortality, and economic loss in developed and developing countries, including the younger age groups.The four major preventable behavioral risk factors are tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and harmful use of alcohol. Life of adolescents is a transitional period, offering them good opportunities for establishing health-promoting lifestyles. This study is done to assess the prevalence of behavioral risk factors for lifestyle diseases of college going adolescents of Chennai. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 483 randomly selected undergraduate students from randomly selected colleges in Chennai between March and September 2016 by two stage stratified sampling method using a semi-structured questionnaire. Data was fed into excel sheet and Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was done using SPSS v.21 package. Results: The participants were between 17 and 20 years. They belonged to professional and non professional colleges. 78% students had unhealthy lifestyle habits. All the participants had at least one risk factor in them. The awareness on the risk factors was significantly less among non professional students, but they had significantly better behavioural habits than the professional students. Boys had significantly better habits than girls and students who were overweight significantly had unhealthy lifestyle habits. Conclusions: The study reflects the poor lifestyle habits of all college-aged individuals, which can be effectively improved by health education and behaviour change communication.

Background: Glaucoma is one among the leading causes of irreversible blindness in India. Lack of awareness and lack of knowledge of this disease is the most important cause for the late presentation which leads to blindness. Aim: To find out the awareness and knowledge about glaucoma in a rural population of a literate state like Kerala. Study Design: A cross sectional study using a pre tested semi structured questionnaire and the participants were selected by cluster sampling method. Materials and Methods: The questionnaire contained details of demographic factors in the first part and questions to assess the knowledge of the participants who were aware of this disease in the second part. The responses were entered in MS EXCEL Sheet and data analysis done using the software SPSS version 15.Chi-square test was done to find out the percentage and proportion. Results: Out of the 4414 participants 2052 were males and 2362 were females. 805 (18.23%) people were aware of glaucoma, Awareness was statistically significant in terms of age, age group 40-59 were more aware of the disease. Knowledge of glaucoma was significant statistically in terms of education (p value =0.003) but not in terms of gender (p value -0.847) Major source of information was through mass media. Only 34.4% knew that this is a disease with no symptoms. Conclusion: Awareness of glaucoma is less when compared to the literacy rate. But knowledge of glaucoma is good among those who are aware of the disease. Mass Media can be utilized to impart knowledge of this disease. Health education classes should be conducted and people should be motivated to undergo screening procedures so that early detection is possible.

Background Myopia is a common ocular disease. Increasing myopia prevalence rate is posing a threat to the health and economy of the developing countries. Review of literature revealed a strong association of myopia with learned people and the possible role of environmental, nutritional, hereditary and near work in the increased prevalence of myopia. Objective to determine the prevalence of myopia among MBBS students in a private medical college and to find out the possible risk factors associated with the disease. Materials and Methods cross sectional study was conducted among the medical students of a private medical college of central Kerala using a pretested, semi structured questionnaire which was distributed to those who gave consent. The visual acuity of the students who participated was also noted using the Snellens chart. Results Out of 100 students 42 were myopes of which 38 were known cases and 4 were found out during our study. 45.33% of the female and 32% of male had myopia. Conclusion Prevalence of Myopia was found to be high among the medical students in this study. Regular eye check up is mandatory in medical students.