Mutritional status, academic performance and parental feeding practices of primary school children in a rural district in Kelantan, Malaysia
Journal Title: Progress in Health Sciences - Year 2014, Vol 4, Issue 1
Abstract
Introduction: The increasing burden of undernutrition and overnutrition at both ends of the nutrition spectrum in children are often accompanied by adverse consequences in school performance. Children with poor nutritional status had lower scores on tests of cognitive functioning, lower activity levels, and poorer psychomotor development, whereas severe malnutrition often leads to impaired psychological and intellectual development. Purpose: To investigate the relationship between children’s nutritional status, their socioeconomic background as well as their parents’s beliefs, attitudes and practices in child feeding with their academic achievement in school. Materials and methods: Anthropometric measure-ments and socioeconomic background information were collected from systematically selected school children aged 10 to 12 years old (n=309), while information regarding parental child feeding practices were obtained via a set of self-administered questionnaire. Results: Based on the World Health Organization (WHO) growth charts, 10.7% and 18.1% of the children were thin and overweight or obese, respectively. Results also showed that children’s nutritional status, household socioeconomic background and parental child feeding beliefs and practices were interrelated with the children’s academic achievement. Conclusion: These findings justified the need for relevant health and nutrition interventions in schools, especially the children of bottom billion community living in the rural areas.
Authors and Affiliations
YY Lee, WM Wan Abdul Manan
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP75197
- DOI -
- Views 118
- Downloads 0
AIDS and nutrition in patients
Introduction: AIDS is a viral infection that particularly affects the nutritional status of patients by complicating the absorption of nutrients and their metabolism. Purpose: The purpose of this retrospective study is t...
European Health Law and Patient’s Rights – a report from an international conference
The conference subject was focused on three main questions: Preventive environment and measures, Reaction against malpractice/Patients Compensation and Learning from mistakes. The congress had four keynote speakers: Roge...
Protective role of black tea and vitamin C during sub-acute toxicity of carbofuran in rats
Purpose: Carbofuran toxicity on rats was studied during sub-acute exposure. This work was undertaken to evaluate the protective effect of aqueous black tea extract and vitamin C against a rat model of oxidative stress in...
Cardiovascular diseases in the tropics
Cardiovascular diseases are widely distributed throughout the world. In Africa they account for about 15% hospital admissions and 10 - 20% fatalities. In the tropics, cardiovascular pathology can be divided into two grou...
Community based monitoring: Reviving hopes realizing rights
The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched in 2005 with a vision to provide universal access to equitable, affordable and quality health care. In order to ensure that these outcomes are achieved and quality an...