Associated Factors of Stunting and Thinness among Rural Adolescent Girls in Telangana, South India

Adolescent girls are the future mothers and their nutritional needs are critical for the wellbeing of a society and future generations. Stunting and thinness are widely prevalent malnutrition problems among adolescent girls and are known risk factor for obstetric complications and associated with the reduced work capacity. In this connection, an attempt is made in this study to explore the prevalence of stunting and thinness among rural adolescent girls in the newly formed Telangana state in India and their associations with socio-demographic factors. It is a cross sectional study carried out in two districts of Telangana state, India during 2012-2014. WHO guidelines were used to compute the prevalence of stunting and thinness and the data was analyzed on SPSS software. A binary logistic regression was used to identify the risk factors of stunting and thinness and the odds ratios were presented along with the 95% confidence intervals. The prevalence of stunting and thinness among adolescent girls in this study area was 33.4% and 20.4% respectively. Absolute height deficit of 6-13 cm was observed during the adolescence period. Age of the respondent, community, standard of living conditions and occupation of the household head were significantly associated with the stunting and age at menarche, literacy status of the girls was associated with the thinness. The prevalence of stunting and thinness was associated with age of the adolescent girls and standard of living, timely introduction of age-specific nutritional education and practices needed for these adolescent girls.