Childhood Obesity Is Projected to Increase Dramatically
by 2010
By Tim Parsons School of Public Health
The numbers of overweight and obese children worldwide
are expected to climb dramatically by 2010, according to a
study by Youfa Wang, an assistant professor at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health, and Tim Lobstein, child and
adolescent health research coordinator for the
International Task Force on Obesity. By the end of the
decade, 46 percent of children in North and South America
are projected to be overweight, and 15 percent will be
obese. In developing countries with strong economic growth,
such as Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Egypt, overweight and
obesity levels will approach those of more industrialized
countries. The findings are published in the March edition
of the International Journal of Pediatric
Obesity.
Obesity is widely known to contribute to a number of
serious health problems, including diabetes and heart
disease. In the United States alone, the direct and
indirect costs associated with obesity amounted to $117
billion in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services.
"The prevalence of overweight and obese school-aged
children is increasing in nearly every country,
particularly in industrialized nations," said Wang, lead
author of the study and assistant professor in the
Bloomberg School's
Department of International Health and
Center for Human
Nutrition. "Effective programs and policies are needed
at the global and local level to prevent this epidemic."
The projections for 2010 are based on the continuation
of national trends measured over the last several decades.
For the study, Wang and Lobstein analyzed all available
cross-sectional and longitudinal studies that examined the
prevalence of overweight or obesity in children and
adolescents up to age 18. The studies, published between
1980 and 2005, included children from 60 countries.
The prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity has
increased in almost all countries for which data are
available. From the 1970s to the end of the 1990s, the
prevalence in school-age children doubled or tripled in
several large countries in most regions of the world, such
as Canada and the United States in North America; Brazil
and Chile in South America; Australia and Japan in the
Western Pacific region; and Finland, Germany, Greece, Spain
and the United Kingdom in Europe. According to Wang and
Lobstein's results, 41 percent of children in eastern
Mediterranean nations will be overweight over the next four
years, as will be 38 percent of children in Europe, 27
percent in the west Pacific region and 22 percent in
Southeast Asia.
The study also found a close correlation between the
percentage of overweight and obese children and economic
development. Highly industrialized nations had the highest
percentages of overweight and obese children, mostly among
their poorest citizens. Countries like Russia and Poland,
which went through economic downturns in the early 1990s,
saw reductions in their percentages of overweight and obese
children. Lower-to-middle-income nations face a double
burden of having both malnourished and overnourished
segments of the population, with most overweight and obese
children concentrated in urban areas.
The study, conducted on behalf of the International
Obesity Task Force, was written by Wang and Lobstein.
Funding was provided by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School
of Public Health and the National Institute of Diabetes and
Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
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2006
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