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Almost 9 in 10 adults may be overweight or obese by 2030
Newswise — Roughly 86 percent
of Americans age 18 and older may be
overweight or obese by 2030 and related
health care costs would double every decade
and could reach $956.9 billion in 2030 – 1
of every 6 health care dollars spent --
according to a new study published online by
the journal Obesity.
The study was authored in
part by Lan Liang, Ph.D., with the federal
government’s Agency for Healthcare Research
and Quality (AHRQ), and was led by Youfa
Wang, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of
International Health and Epidemiology at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health.
The study is conducted based
on several large national survey data sets
collected over the past three decades,
including those collected by AHRQ and the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overweight is defined as
having a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 to
29.9.
Obesity and overweight are
especially worrisome because of their impact
on quality of life, premature death, and
health care, as well as associated costs.
Being overweight or obese
increases the risk of many health problems
including diabetes, stroke, heart disease,
osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, breast cancer
and certain other types of cancer.
If the rise in current rates
of overweight and obesity continue, as most
experts believe they will, future adults may
have shorter life-spans than the current
generation.
According to the researchers,
who also included coauthors Drs. May Beydoun
and Benjamin Caballero from Johns Hopkins
and Shiriki Kumanyika from the University of
Pennsylvania School of Medicine, half of
U.S. adults, as a whole, will become obese,
as will 97 percent of black women and 91
percent of Mexican-American men by 2030.
The authors also estimate
that by 2022, about 80 percent of adults may
be overweight or obese, and 100 percent
could be by 2048. But the prevalence will
reach 100 percent in black women by 2034.
Moreover, nearly one third of
all U.S. children and adolescents could
become obese (body mass index is greater
than the 95th percentile) by 2034, and the
prevalence could increase to half by 2070.
Black girls and Mexican-American boys are
especially vulnerable--four in 10 may become
overweight or obese by 2030, and half by
2050.
For details, see “Will All
Americans Become Overweight or Obese?
Estimating the progression and cost of the
US obesity epidemic.”
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