Prevalence and association of underweight, overweight, obesity, neck circumference, hypertension and diabetes mellitus among school staff in Jaffna district

The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence and associations of underweight/overweight/obesity, neck circumference (NC), hypertension (HT) and diabetes mellitus (DM) among school staff in Jaffna district. It was a descriptive study on 6335 (31% were males and 69% were females) school staff. Overweight and obesity were defined according to the cut-off values for Asian population. Results showed, among males 3% were underweight, 26% were normal weight, 48% were overweight and 23% were obese. Among females 6% were underweight, 28% were normal weight, 41% were overweight and 25% were obese. Seventeen and 6% of the total population had HT and DM respectively. Average NC for males was 32.85cm for underweight, 35.48cm for normal weight, 38.27cm for overweight and 40.59cm for obese. Average NC for females was 29.13cm for underweight, 30.95cm for normal weight, 32.81cm for overweight and 34.53cm for obese. In conclusion the body mass index (BMI) distribution of the population sample shows that more people in both gender categories were predominantly overweight. About 44% of the total population is overweight. Furthermore, approximately 25% of both genders were obese. Altogether at least 2/3 of the population sample was above the healthy weight. More men were overweight/obese than women. Diabetes was less common than hypertension among the target population. However like hypertension, the prevalence of DM also increased with BMI increment. Interestingly the size of the NC increased parallels with BMI increment