Índice de massa corporal de funcionários públicos do Rio de Janeiro: validade da informação referida e associação com posição sócio-econômica no estudo do Pró-Saúde

Abstract

Obesity is becoming one of the greatesd and most recent problems of public health. It is generally defined from an indirect measuremnt of corporal fat, the Body Mass Index (BMI). Apart from its limitations, the index is considered an appropriate measurement for obesity. The objectives of this thesis are to evaluate the association between BMI and socioeconomic status, in a cohort study among employees of a public university (the Pró Saúde Study). The results are presented in two papers, based on analyses of the 4,030 employees from Phase 1 of the study. In the first paper, the validity of the informed weight, height and body mass index (BMI) is presented. For the evaluation of the measured and reported parameters, it was utilized the paired test t of Student, Bland and Altman graphs and the intraclass correlation coefficient. Sensitivity and specificity for many categories of BMI and the equation of prediction for weight and height were estimated. The results showed that the reported information presented high validity, and agreed with the measured weight and height. In the second paper, we present the investigation results of the association between education, income and body mass index. The analysis were stratified by gender, and ANOVA and Wald test were utilized to check the differences between subgroups. Hypotheses were tested by multiple linear regression. The results showed that there was association between educational low levels and BMI increase among women. Therefore, education seems to presvent obesity, mainly among women. As a conclusion, it is highlighted the importance of both the identification of groups susceptible to obesity, for planning interventions, and the knowledge of the validity of reported weight and height, for it can be securely utilized in epidemiological studies.