Changes in BMI among Korean Adolescents during Last a Decade

Paper

Friday, July 13, 2007

This presentation is part of : Initiatives in Health Promotion

Hae Young Kang, PhD¹, Sam Soon Cho, BSN², Eun Kyung Kim, BSN², and Hyeon Jeong Kim, BSN². (1) College of Nursing, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, South Korea, (2) Dept. of Nursing, Graduate School of Education, Chonnam National University, Naju, South Korea

Learning Objective #1: identify current changes in BMI among Korean adolescents to plan health promotion strategies.
Learning Objective #2: suggest gender-specific BMI differences among adolescents.

Objective: This study was to identify the changes of BMI (kg/杮) among Korean adolescents (2^nd, 5^th, 8^th and 11^th graders) during 1995-2004 from the database of education of Korea National Center of Education Statistics and Information.
Method: The subjects were 369,201 students (2^nd = 90,142, 5^th = 90,661, 8^th = 93,854, 11^th = 94,544) who were nation-widely sampled by Korea Education Development Institute (KEDI). KEDI has been surveyed heights and weights of the students from the standardized sample schools at annual basis. BMI was computed using Excell program and compared with Age-specific BMI {(Wt – Age-specific standard Wt) ¸ Age-specific standard Wt ´ 100}developed by Korean Pediatric Society.

Finding: Average BMI of all graders were higher than those of 50 percentile in Age-specific BMI developed by Korean Pediatric Society; and increased more in latter five-years except in 2^nd girl students. According to the gender, BMI of boy students were higher at 2^nd and 5^th during all last ten years; but at 8^th, were higher from the year 2000 and at 11^th were higher from the year 1999 respectively. The gap of BMI between boys and girls showed sharply wider since 2002 in all graders which meant the BMI of girl students dropped markedly in recent years. According to grader groups, BMI increased relatively more from 5^th to 8^ththan the others.

Conclusion: From the findings, the authors conclude that recently improper dieting is attempted popularly among girl students from primary school days; and suggest further studies to develop school-based health promotion program to have adolescents understand their proper body weights and keep them in daily life and to compare with the data of other Asian countries.

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