Feature

Pandemic adds more weight to burden of obesity in children


 

American children gained a lot of weight in the last year, setting a dangerous trajectory towards metabolic disease that requires urgent policy change, according to a new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Jamie Bussel

“Our nation’s safety net is fragile, outdated, and out of reach for millions of eligible kids and caregivers,” said Jamie Bussel, senior program officer at the RWJF, and senior author of the report. She added that the pandemic further fractured an already broken system that disproportionately overlooks “children of color and those who live farthest from economic opportunity”.

It’s time to think ‘bigger and better’

Ms. Bussel said, during a press conference, that congress responded to the pandemic with “an array of policy solutions,” but it’s now time to think ‘bigger and better.’

“There have been huge flexibilities deployed across the safety net program and these have been really important reliefs, but the fact is many of them are temporary emergency relief measures,” she explained.

For the past 3 years, the RWJF’s annual State of Childhood Obesity report has drawn national and state obesity data from large surveys including the National Survey of Children’s Health, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, the WIC Participant and Program Characteristics Survey, and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Similar to in past years, this year’s data show that rates of obesity and overweight have remained relatively steady and have been highest among minority and low-income populations. For example, data from the 2019-2020 National Survey of Children’s Health, along with an analysis conducted by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau, show that one in six – or 16.2% – of youth aged 10-17 years have obesity.

While non-Hispanic Asian children had the lowest obesity rate (8.1%), followed by non-Hispanic White children (12.1%), rates were significantly higher for Hispanic (21.4%), non-Hispanic Black (23.8%), and non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native (28.7%) children, according to the report.

“Additional years of data are needed to assess whether obesity rates changed after the onset of the pandemic,” explained Ms. Bussel.

Digging deeper

Other studies included in this year’s report were specifically designed to measure the impact of the pandemic, and show a distinct rise in overweight and obesity, especially in younger children. For example, a retrospective cohort study using data from Kaiser Permanente Southern California showed the rate of overweight and obesity in children aged 5-11 years rose to 45.7% between March 2020 and January 2021, up from 36.2% before the pandemic.

Another of these studies, which was based on national electronic health records of more than 430,000 children, showed the obesity rate crept from 19.3% to 22.4% between August 2019 and August 2020.

“The lid we had been trying desperately to put on the obesity epidemic has come off again,” said Sandra G Hassink, MD, MSc, who is medical director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Institute for Healthy Childhood Weight.

“In the absence of COVID we had been seeing slow upticks in the numbers – and in some groups we’d been thinking maybe we were headed toward stabilization – but these numbers blow that out of the water ... COVID has escalated the rates,” she said in an interview.

“Unfortunately, these two crises – the COVID pandemic, the childhood obesity epidemic – in so many ways have exacerbated one another,” said Ms. Bussel. “It’s not a huge surprise that we’re seeing an increase in childhood obesity rates given the complete and utter disruption of every single system that circumscribes our lives.”

Pages

Recommended Reading

PRESERVED-HF: Dapagliflozin improves physical limitations in patients with HFpEF
MDedge Cardiology
Weight-loss surgery linked to fewer cardiovascular events, more so with RYGB
MDedge Cardiology
Researchers warn young adults are at highest risk of obesity
MDedge Cardiology
A new weight loss threshold for T2d remission after bariatric surgery?
MDedge Cardiology
New AHA guidance targets obesity-related hypertension
MDedge Cardiology
PCOS linked to menopausal urogenital symptoms but not hot flashes
MDedge Cardiology
Time-restricted eating: An easy way to improve metabolic health?
MDedge Cardiology
‘Metabolically healthy obesity’ tied to substantial heart risk
MDedge Cardiology
TriMaster study shows precision medicine in diabetes is possible
MDedge Cardiology
Primary goal in T2D should be weight loss, diabetologists say
MDedge Cardiology