Awareness of Diabetes and Obesity in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Diabetes mellitus (DM) and obesity (OB) are rising problems globally, and are also rapidly growing health issues in Turkey. The lack of a proper public awareness has worsened the situation, thereby hampering the implementation of preventive measures. The aim of the present study was to evaluate a questionnaire, speci cally designed for measuring the level of awareness of the general Turkish population on DM and OB.

Material and Method: The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) questionnaire was modi ed to measure the in uence of knowledge about diet and physical activity on DM and OB among the Turkish population. We investigated the relationship between the level of knowledge of volunteers on DM and OB and other factors, such as age, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), education, and having DM or a family history of DM. The results were analyzed appropriately using Student’s t-test, Mann–Whitney U test, Kruskal–Wallis test, One-way analy- sis of variance (ANOVA), and multiple logistic regression model. The present study was observational and designed prospectively.

Results: According to the observations, only 30.1% of the total volunteers that took part in the study had an awareness of DM and OB. There was no statistical difference on the level of knowledge about DM and OB between the various gender groups included in the study (p= 0.590). The participants with university level education scored the highest. The mean scores of knowledge on DB and OB were found to be lowest among the people with low SES; however, surprisingly, people with high/very high SES also scored low.

Discussion: The results obtained indicated that the level of awareness of DM and OB was moderate and insuf cient. DM and OB were pre- sent in approximately 6.5 and 15.2 million people in Turkey, respectively. With a diminished awareness among the Turkish people on DM and OB, the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the young population to create awareness on a large scale for the betterment of the fu- ture generations.