Nutritional Status, Iron Status (Hb) and Attitude to Reproductive Health as Components of Adolescent Reproductive Readiness

Abstract

The fertility rate for adolescents aged 15-19 years in Indonesia reaches 10%. Approximately 1.4 million (30%) young women aged 15-19 years have sexual intercourse, which results in pregnancy and around 57% of these pregnancies are unwanted. The tendency to get married and get pregnant at a young age, whether planned or not, results in reproductive readiness, both mental and physical, which is very important for young women. Their nutritional status measures adolescents' physical readiness—meanwhile, reproductive knowledge and perceptions of reproductive health measure adolescents' mental readiness for reproduction. The study aimed to identify risk factors for nutritional status, iron status and reproductive health attitudes. This type of research is analytic observational with a cross-sectional design. The population of this study was all adolescents in Ogan Komering Ilir District. The sampling technique used was cluster sampling. The research sample was 139 young girls at SMA N 1 Kayuagung, Ogan Komering Ilir Regency, South Sumatra. Data is presented in univariate and bivariate. The statistical test was chi-square with the Fisher's exact/Kolmogorov Smirnov alternative test. The results showed that around 52.5% of female adolescents were underweight, 15.6% had anaemia, and 6.5% had poor reproductive health attitudes. Based on bivariate analysis, risk factors related to adolescent iron status were eating habits (p-value = 0.039), risk factors related to adolescent attitudes were class level (p-value = 0.0005), father's education level (p-value = 0.017), puberty age (p-value = 0.008) and level of knowledge (p-value = 0.003). Education is needed to increase reproductive health knowledge and improve adolescent eating habits intensively with exciting and not dull material such as role-playing or group discussions.