Abstract: Prospective Clinical Research Report Risk factors associated with hospitalization owing to COVID-19: a cross-sectional study in Palestine Journal of International Medical Research 49(12) 1–20 ! The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/03000605211064405 journals.sagepub.com/home/imr May Hamdan1 , Manal Badrasawi2, Souzan Zidan3, Asma Sayarah1, Lamia Abu Zahra1, Shahd Dana1 and Tasneem Almasry1 Abstract Objectives: We aimed to identify the risk factors for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)associated hospitalization to provide evidence for improved clinical care of patients with COVID19 infection. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study among 300 participants. The collected data comprised sociodemographic data, lifestyle habits, physical activity, medical history, anthropometric measurements, COVID-19-related symptoms, dietary habits prior to and after COVID-19 infection, and psychological status. Results: Fifty-nine participants were hospitalized. Fever, dry cough, joint pain, chills, diarrhea, and shortness of breath were significantly associated with hospitalization owing to COVID-19. Adults with obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular diseases had higher rates of hospitalization. The findings also showed that residential area and age were related to COVID-19 hospitalization. Furthermore, our analysis revealed that certain dietary habits were associated with hospitalization rates. Conclusion: Our study confirmed that older age, urban residence, illiteracy, obesity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and symptoms of loss of smell and sneezing elevated the risk of hospitalization among patients with COVID-19 infection. 3 Department of Nutrition and Food Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, Hebron University, Hebron, West Bank, Palestine 1 Program of Health and Therapeutic Nutrition, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Palestine Polytechnic University, Hebron, Palestine 2 Department of Nutrition and Food Technology, Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, An-Najah National University, Nablus, West Bank, Palestine Corresponding author: May Hamdan, Program of Health and Therapeutic Nutrition, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Palestine Polytechnic University, Wadi Al-Hariah Campus, PO Box 198, Hebron, Palestine. Email: mayhamdan@ppu.edu Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 Journal of International Medical Research Patients with a higher risk of hospitalization may benefit from targeted therapeutic and preventive interventions. Keywords Coronavirus disease 2019, diet, pandemic, hospitalization, cross-sectional study, risk factor Date received: 22 June 2021; accepted: 16 November 2021