Investigating sedentariness and health status of primary school teachers in Ghana

Edward W Ansah; Mawuli Adabla; Norgbedzie Jerry; Eric A Aloko; John E Hagan

doi:10.1186/s12913-023-09925-3

Investigating sedentariness and health status of primary school teachers in Ghana

BMC Health Serv Res. 2023 Sep 12;23(1):983. doi: 10.1186/s12913-023-09925-3.

Authors

Edward W Ansah¹, Mawuli Adabla², Norgbedzie Jerry², Eric A Aloko², John E Hagan^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation (HPER), University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana. edward.ansah@ucc.edu.gh.
² Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation (HPER), University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana.
³ Neurocognition and Action-Biomechanics-Research Group, Faculty of Psychology and Sport Sciences, Bielefeld University, Postfach 10 01 31, Bielefeld, 33501, Germany.

Abstract

Objective: Physical inactivity is linked to chronic illnesses and disabilities among workers, especially those in high demanding jobs like teachers. Despite the global prominence of sedentary behavior research, studies drawing the relationships between physical inactivity and multimorbidity among working teacher populations in low-and middle-countries remain untapped. This study assessed the sedentariness and health status of primary school teachers in Cape Coast Metropolis in Ghana.

Method: This cross-sectional survey employed 1109 primary school teachers from the Cape Coast Metropolis in the Central Region of Ghana, targeting the entire population.

Results: Generally, the teachers were highly sedentary and reported poor health status. Other results showed no difference in sedentariness across gender, (n = 1107, t= -0.32, p > 0.05). However, female teachers suffer more pain and discomfort, (n = 1103.51), t = - 3.07, p < 0.05), anxiety and depression, (n = 1099.56), t = - 2.85, p < 0.000), and poor health status (n = 1107), t = 2.14, p < 0.05), than their male counterparts. Also, pain and discomfort, anxiety and depression, health status and years of work significantly predicted sedentariness among the teachers, F (4, 1104) = 5.966, p = 0.00, R = 0.145, R² = 0.029, adjusted R² = 0.018.

Conclusion: The findings suggest that individualized or personalized interventions are urgently needed to promote regular physical activity to improve the health status and reduce associated complications on the health and well-being, especially among the female primary school teachers. Given the health risks of sedentary lifestyle, behavioral interventions at the person-level (i.e., individualized- routine weekly physical activity programs) and built environmental restructuring (e.g., creation of walkways to encourage regular walking) could be done to improve physical activity behavior among teachers within the Cape Coast Metropolis, and perhaps beyond.

Keywords: Anxiety; Depression; Discomfort; Pain; Physical inactivity; Sedentariness; Self-rated health status.

MeSH terms

Cross-Sectional Studies
Female
Ghana / epidemiology
Health Status*
Humans
Male
Pain*
Schools