A Screening Program for Overweight Status Among Schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia: A Proposed Co-design Project to Tackle the Problem

Abstract

The paper realizes the importance of communicating with schools to conduct nutritional screening, assessment and intervention programs for obesity and related risk factors to tackle the problem at earlier stage. The screening program was conducted by dietetics' students "under supervision" as part of their practice and community services to apply some assessment method for nutritional status. Two intermediate schools for girls in Jeddah city were involved in the screening stage, followed by a full nutritional assessment and implementation of a designed intervention program at one of the schools. At screening stage, interview questionnaires for diet histories and anthropometric measurements used to screen overweight status and related food patterns. National and international references data used for assessment and comparison. Following screening approach, a designed comprehensive nutritional assessment and intervention program was piloted at one of the screened schools for overweight status. The author is sincerely thankful for "Dr. Nahlaa Khalifa" for her participation in designing and applying the project. Thanks also goes to the school head teachers for letting the research team access the schools, survey and contact girls who thankfully agreed to take part in the screening and intervention part of the study. Special thanks to the junior students of the Clinical Nutrition Program in the academic year 2014-15 for collecting data and applying the screening approach particularly, the students' team leader "Rawan Alharbi" for her primary data entry to anthropometric measurements. Exceptional appreciations for the senior students "Lujain Abu-Alhamail, Shadan Hanjour, Ghada Alharbi, Waad Turkistani" for their great help in data collection and entry and assistance in the application of the intervention program in the academic year 2015-16. Warm thanks to my colleagues "Dr. Asmaa Wakady" for joining the research team in the intervention part of the study and for Dr. Areej Alkhaldy for joining us in the screening part of the study. M ost sincere thanks to "M r. Ahmed Hussain" for his technical support and proofreading of this work. school girls prevent the generalizability of the study findings to wider population, previous studies used random selection of schools and large sample sizes showed a high prevalence of overweight status among Saudi students.Therefore, designing and piloting of an intervention program for implementation at a national level is useful to tackle the problem.

Childhood obesity in association with eating habits & lifestyles among Saudi students in low socioeconomic status: a cross sectional study

“…Nutrition education is an important tool in reducing levels of obesity via changing eating habits and lifestyles. 10 In accordance with previous work, data collected from the Shaping Healthy Choices Program (SHCP) was tested among fourth graders and showed improvements in BMI scores and in nutrition education. 21 In addition, the Maryland Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) observed that nutrition education is associated with reduced BMI levels and increased fruit and vegetable consumption and physical activity.…”

“…9 In the absence of accurate data points regarding pre-primary school children's food habits in Saudi Arabia, the literature has shown that children aged between three and six years are usually fed by their mothers whenever they demand to be fed which may make them more prone to nutrition related issues, hence formal training at an early stage could help children develop healthy eating habits. 10 Being overweight, obese, or diabetic is widely associated with frequent consumption of sugar, savoury and crispy snacks, flavoured milk and soda drinks and snacking between meals. Pre-primary school children habitually go to bed with a bottle of milk, specifically flavoured milk, which puts them at a higher risk of developing symptoms of obesity.…”

Investigating the quality of breakfast for female adolescents using a multi-method approach in Saudi Arabia: A cross-sectional study

“…Interestingly, the frequent consumption of breakfast food items in this study does not differ from the consumption patterns of female adolescents in other regions of the country. [ 30 ] This could be attributed to the recent rapid development of Al-Jumum, as it was previously classified as a village. This transition has consequently affected the food access, nutritional status, and furthermore allowed both under- and over-nutrition to co-exist.…”

“…Previous analysis of food and beverage items at girls’ schools in Saudi Arabia, where students are mostly buying their food from the schools, showed that 67.5% (n = 27) of food/drink items were HFSS. [ 30 ] Moreover, the nutritional composition of breakfast in secondary public schools in Makkah was reported to include 349.1 ± 4.6 kcal, 4.3 ± 3.3 g of saturated fats, 22.6 ± 2.2 g of sugar, 892.6 ± 636.3 mg of salt, and 2.6 ± 2.0 g of dietary fiber. [ 38 ] Therefore, buying food from a school canteen, which is the case in this study, could have an impact on the composition and quality of breakfast among this population.…”

“…[ 17 , 29 ] In Saudi Arabia, studies classified food and beverage items as either HFSS or non-HFSS foods/drinks at both public and private schools, where 67.5% (n = 27) of 40 items were HFSS items and 30% (n = 12) were non-HFSS. [ 30 ]…”