Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Demographic factors such as place of residence, urbanization grade and family background are considered to be associated with overweight and obesity in children. Our study investigates differences in obesity prevalence and related characteristics in children from urban, semi-urban, and rural areas, and in children from complete and incomplete families. The study is part of the fifth round of World Health Organization Europe’s Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative (COSI)*.

Methods: We measured weight, height, waist and hip circumference in a representative sample of 2409 7-year-old Czech children in 2019. BMI was calculated from the data and the sample was classified using the WHO reference. Further health-related, behavioural and socio-economic information was gathered using family and school questionnaires. For the purpose of this analysis we evaluated a subsample of 1607 children. The association between dependent variables (place and urbanization grade of residence, family completeness) and a set of mutually correlated overweight/obesity predictors was evaluated using multivariate regression with a reduction of dimensionality, known as bidirectional orthogonal projections to latent structures (O2PLS).

Results: The urbanization grade of residential location appears to play a significant role in child obesity-related factors. In rural areas, more school playgrounds are available after school, children need to travel to school a longer distance but are less likely to walk to school. Children are also more likely to live with both parents, while in urban areas more families are single-parent. Neither BMI nor weight category was affected by the place of residence. The analysis revealed that children from complete families had significantly higher weight and height. This, however, did not translate into differences in BMI or weight category of the children, either.

Conclusion: Children from urban, semi-urban, and rural areas are exposed to different sets of obesity-related factors, as are children from complete and incomplete families. Family completeness also correlates with the children’s weight and height. Yet no significant correlation was found between the urbanization grade, place of residence, or family background and BMI and the weight category in 7-year-old Czech children.

* Wijnhoven T, Branca F. WHO European Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative. Protocol. Copenhagen, WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2008.

The study was supported by grants: AZV MZČR 17–31670 A and MZČR – RVO EÚ 00023761