OBJECTIVE: To estimate the prevalence of overweight and associated factors among children from public and private day care centers in Balneário Camboriú, Santa Catarina, Brazil. METHODS: Cross-sectional study. In the first stage, 20 day care centers were chosen, then 564 children were chosen by lot to be enrolled in the study. Data collection included a questionnaire with children's and caretakers' characteristics and anthropometric measurements. Adjusted Odds ratios, and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were calculated by unconditional logistic regression. RESULTS: The response rate was 83.7% (n=491). Most children were attending public day care centers (75.7%); they were over two years old, and distributed evenly by gender. The eutrophic status was predominant (87.8%), followed by overweight (9.5%). Only 2.6% of the individuals were at risk of malnutrition or malnourished. After adjustement, children younger than two years old (OR 2.8; 95%CI 1.1-7.7), with birth weight >4kg (OR 6.3; 95%CI 1.2-34.6) or those whose caretakers considered their food intake as high (OR 21.1; 95%CI 5.9-75.4) had an increased risk of overweight. Caretakers overweight, marital status, age and years of education were not associated with overweight among the assessed children. CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of overweight found in this study was about four times higher than the prevalence of malnutrition and it was associated to children's characteristics.
overweight; child, preschool; child day care centers
