Prevalence of Childhood Obesity and Overweight Varies Among States

Fat parents have fat kids.

"During the past 3 decades, there has been a dramatic increase in childhood obesity in the United States," write Gopal K. Singh, PhD, and colleagues at the Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, US Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, Maryland. "The rate has more than tripled, and the current prevalence remains high among children across most age, sex, racial/ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.... Although sex and racial/ethnic inequalities are presented on a routine basis, geographic disparities in US childhood obesity are less well examined and trends in geographic disparities are even rarer or nonexistent."

Using a cross-sectional analysis of the 2003 and 2007 National Survey of Children's Health data, this study aimed to determine changes in state-specific obesity and overweight prevalence among US children and adolescents in the 50 states and the District of Columbia between 2003 and 2007.

The study population consisted of 46,707 and 44,101 children aged 10 to 17 years in 2003 and 2007, respectively. Bivariate and logistic regression analyses were used to calculate differences among states in prevalence and odds of obesity and overweight.

Among US children in 2007, prevalence of obesity was 16.4% and prevalence of overweight was 31.6%. The states varied dramatically in prevalence of childhood obesity, which was highest in Mississippi (21.9%) and lowest in Oregon (9.6%). The highest prevalence of childhood overweight was also in Mississippi (44.5%); the lowest was 23.1% in Utah.

Prevalence of obesity increased by 10% for all US children from 2003 to 2007, increasing by18% for girls, decreasing by 32% for children in Oregon, and doubling among girls in Arizona and Kansas. Compared with children in Oregon, those in Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, and Kansas had more than twice the adjusted odds of being obese.

Kudos, fatsos.