Healthy life style practice and its associated factors among public servants in Fiche town, Ethiopia | BMC Public Health

A healthy lifestyle is a valuable source of decreasing the prevalence and effect of health problems; promoting health, coping with stressors, and improving the quality of life [1, 6, 12, 14, 15]. Therefore, considering the effective role of public servants as valuable human resources in delivering services, this study was conducted to assess the healthy lifestyle practice and its association factors among public servants in Fiche town. This study revealed that work experience was significantly associated with healthy lifestyle practice. Participants who had work experience of more than or equal to fifteen years were less likely to practice a healthy lifestyle than those who had work experience of less than or equal to five. This finding was in line with the results of the studies in Hamadan (Iran) [3]. This could be due to the workers with more years of work experience tending to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle and high stress.

In the current study, avoiding extra salt was a factor that showed a significant association with healthy lifestyle practice. Participants who avoided extra salt had better healthy lifestyle practices than those who had not avoided extra salt. This finding was higher than a study done in Saudi Arabia, but this finding is lower than the finding of a study done in Jimma University Specialized Hospital (Ethiopia). In addition, a study done in the United States showed low salt diet practices among African Americans [3, 16]. This may be due to the socio-cultural practice of the community and the improvement in awareness creation on the respondents’ part towards these habits or practices.

This study found that 44.6% had sufficient knowledge regarding healthy lifestyle practice, which is similar to the study done on lifestyle modification practice in Hosanna, which was 44.9%, and the finding is higher than the study done in the Nigerian suburban community, which was 42% [17]. This might be the sample size and the study time, respectively.

The study revealed that participants who had sufficient knowledge in practicing a healthy lifestyle were more likely to practice a good lifestyle as compared with those who did not have sufficient knowledge. From the participants, 89.7% abstained from alcohol drinking. This is less than the study finding in Durame (Ethiopia) [18]. This could be due to social and cultural practices that discourage alcohol drinking and smoking.

The result of this study revealed that 76.3% had a positive attitude towards healthy lifestyle practice. while a study done in Kenya indicated that 41% of the respondents had not a positive attitude towards adopting healthier lifestyles [19]. The possible reason for having a higher proportion of respondents with a favorable attitude could be due to better sources of health information among study participants and differences in the scoring system.

In this study the percentage of respondents with good healthy lifestyle practice (57.3%) was higher than the respondents in Kenya, where 41% of them had good health lifestyle practices. The possible reason for the difference could be that in Kenya, the study only considered dietary practice and regular exercise as criteria to classify the respondents as having good or bad practice, but in this study, healthy diet, smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical exercise were measured [19].

In this study, 8.09% of the respondents were current smokers, which were 97% males and 3% females, and this study was higher than the finding done among civil servants in Sidama Zone and less than the study done in Butajira, which was 4.4% and 12.8%, respectively. The possible explanation for the result in Butajira, the age range of the study subject was above 15 with more than therefore it is expected to be high among younger study populations, and the study in Sidama may be due to the difference in sample size & due to the time gap the two studies were carried out [20].

In the current study, 31 (0.04%) current smokers smoke 10 or more cigarettes per day. Twenty-eight (54.9%) of current smokers have mentioned that they want to stop smoking, whereas about 34.1% were very concerned about the consequences of cigarette smoking. This percentage was lower than the findings from studies conducted in Iran and Norway, which indicated that 2.8% of Iranian employees smoked more than 10 cigarettes a day, while the Norwegian study showed that 3.2% of smokers smoked more than 10 cigarettes daily [8]. This may be due to the urbanization and industrialization-related factors.

Results of our study revealed that only 76.7% of respondents consume less than the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables. This result is consistent with many other lower- and middle-income countries, such as Bangladesh, Mexico, and Thailand, where fruits and vegetables are produced mainly to export to other countries and which less than the study done in South Africa are. This may be due to the economic status of the country. In this study, only 19.2% of the respondents eat fruits and vegetables at least once a day, which is greater than the study in Addis abeba 14.6% didn’t eat fruit and vegetables within a week. This is somewhat similar to finding among bank employees and teachers in A.A., where one third of the participants reported no fruit & vegetable in their usual diet in a week (38). In this study, the cost (55.4%) and lack of availability (43.5%) were the two major reasons for not eating fruit or vegetables frequently.

Concerning alcohol consumption, 44.8% of the respondents were current alcohol consumers, and this was lower than the finding in Addis Ababa, where 61.9% of the study participants reported as being current alcohol consumers. From the participants, 89.7% abstained from alcohol drinking. This is less than the study finding in Durame (Ethiopia) [18]. This could be due to social and cultural practices that discourage alcohol drinking.

The study showed that the prevalence of binge drinking was 46.8%; this had a share of 29.9% males & 6.7% females. This is high when it is compared to the prevalence of binge drinking among adults in A.A., which was 10% in males & Malawi 19% in males & 2.3% in females (28, 46). This might be due to the prohibition of alcohol drinking in those big towns.

From this study, the majority of participants, 33.4%, drink daily, and 24.8% drink alcohol 4 to 6 times per week. The mean units of alcohol consumed on a day they used alcohol was 2.24 bottles (+ 1.13 SD).This result similar 32% in India [21] and higher in Malaysia [7]. Among the study participants, only 16.1% of the participants practice regular exercise for 30 min per day for most of the days in a week, which was lower than 89% and 43.7% physically active in studies done in India and Addis Ababa, respectively [18, 22]. A possible explanation could be a lack of organized setups that are favorable for exercise. A similar study done in Saudi Arabia showed that only 11.1% practiced physical activity most of the days in a week. Another study was done in the USA on African Americans that also showed the majority of the practiced physical activity that is higher than this study’s finding. This could be poor knowledge on the importance of physical activity in the management of chronic diseases.

The study found that 36.3. % of public servants had done physical exercise. This is better than the study done in Sidama zone which was found that 32.58% of civil servants had done physical exercise [20].

According to this study, participants who were public servants were found to be more physically active (33.6%) than bankers (30.3%) because the bank workers spent more hours sitting than the government employees. In this study, occupation had shown no statistically significant association with healthy lifestyle practice. In studies conducted independently, the odds of poor lifestyle practice were higher among the bank workers. In those studies it is explained that bankers’ workers were more stressed and sedentary.

In our study, respondents who were good at knowing CNCDs were 2-fold greater than those who were poor at knowing CNCDs. This is consistent with findings from studies conducted in Jimma and Pakistan [23, 24]. This may be associated with the fact that knowing the health benefits would motivate them to exercise regularly.

Therefore, from this study, 363 respondents (57.3%) were practicing the above four healthy lifestyle measures. This finding is lower than a study done in China and Saudi Arabia in which (70%) and (48.6%), respectively [16, 25]. This might be due to the level of their economy and level of awareness about healthy lifestyle practice and its advantages. This result showed that merely having good knowledge and a favorable attitude may not lead to one owns certain behavior changes in a healthy lifestyle, but additionally the reinforcing & enabling factors should be fulfilled.

Limitation

The nature of study design Self-reporting creates recall bias and tends to collect data on a limited number of variables at a single time point, which may not capture the complexity of the issue being studied. In cross-sectional study design, the exposure and outcome are simultaneously measured; there is generally no evidence of a temporal relationship between exposure and outcome, which could not enable the investigation of the cause-effect relationship. Cultural sensitivity, insufficient data collection on cigarette smoking habits, and the restricted generalizability due to the intricacies of the public sector are factors to consider. These limitations highlight the necessity for cross-section studies that can track changes over time and provide a clearer understanding of how smoking behaviors evolve and impact health outcomes. By addressing these gaps, researchers can develop more effective interventions tailored to diverse populations.