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Prevalence, disparities, and trends in obesity and severe obesity among students in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, school district, 2006-2010
Journal article   Open access

Prevalence, disparities, and trends in obesity and severe obesity among students in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, school district, 2006-2010

Jessica M Robbins, Giridhar Mallya, Marcia Polansky and Donald F Schwarz
Preventing chronic disease, v 9(9), pp E145-E145
2012
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd9.120118
PMID: 22954057
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd9.120118View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Open Access (License Unspecified),  Open

Abstract

Adolescent Age Distribution Body Mass Index Child Child, Preschool Cost of Illness Female Financing, Government Food Services - economics Health Surveys Healthcare Disparities - ethnology Humans Male Multivariate Analysis Nutrition Surveys Obesity - epidemiology Obesity - prevention & control Philadelphia - epidemiology Population Surveillance Prevalence Schools - statistics & numerical data Schools - trends Sex Distribution Socioeconomic Factors Students - statistics & numerical data Young Adult
Epidemic increases in obesity negatively affect the health of US children, individually and at the population level. Although surveillance of childhood obesity at the local level is challenging, height and weight data routinely collected by school districts are valuable and often underused public health resources. We analyzed data from the School District of Philadelphia for 4 school years (2006-2007 through 2009-2010) to assess the prevalence of and trends in obesity and severe obesity among public school children. The prevalence of obesity decreased from 21.5% in 2006-2007 to 20.5% in 2009-2010, and the prevalence of severe obesity decreased from 8.5% to 7.9%. Both obesity and severe obesity were more common among students in grades 6 through 8 than among children in lower grades or among high school students. Hispanic boys and African American girls had the highest prevalence of obesity and severe obesity; Asian girls had much lower rates of obesity and severe obesity than any other group. Although obesity and severe obesity declined during the 4-year period in almost all demographic groups, the decreases were generally smaller in the groups with the highest prevalence, including high school students, Hispanic males, and African American females. Although these data suggest that the epidemic of childhood obesity may have begun to recede in Philadelphia, unacceptably high rates of obesity and severe obesity continue to threaten the health and futures of many school children.

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61 citations in Web of Science
62 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Web of Science research areas
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
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