{"id":4799,"date":"2020-02-27T10:15:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T15:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nchstats.com\/?p=4799"},"modified":"2020-02-27T10:15:08","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T15:15:08","slug":"prevalence-of-obesity-and-severe-obesity-among-adults-united-states-2017-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/2020\/02\/27\/4799\/","title":{"rendered":"Prevalence of Obesity and Severe Obesity Among Adults: United States, 2017\u20132018"},"content":{"rendered":"

Questions for Craig Hales, Health Statistician and Lead Author of \u201cPrevalence of Obesity and Severe Obesity Among Adults: United States, 2017\u20132018<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q<\/strong>: How has the prevalence of obesity and severe obesity in U.S. adults changed since 1999-2000?<\/p>\n

CH<\/em><\/strong>: The prevalence of obesity and severe obesity among U.S. adults increased since 1999-2000.\u00a0 The prevalence of obesity was 30.5% among adults in 1999-2000 and increased more than 10 percentage points to 42.4% in 2017-2018.\u00a0 The prevalence of severe obesity among adults almost doubled from 4.7% in 1999-2000 to 9.2% in 2017-2018.\u00a0 The prevalence for obesity and severe obesity in 2017-2018 is the highest ever reported among all U.S. adults.<\/p>\n

\n

Q<\/strong>: Can you explain the differences between obesity and severe obesity?<\/p>\n

CH<\/em><\/strong>: The definitions of obesity and severe obesity are based on the body mass index, or BMI, which is based on your weight and your height.\u00a0 Obesity is defined as having a BMI of 30 or higher, and severe obesity is defined as having a BMI of 40 or higher.<\/p>\n

\n

Q<\/strong>: How far back do you have obesity trend data?<\/p>\n

CH<\/em><\/strong>: The trends reported in this data brief go back to 1999-2000, which is when NHANES began running as a continuous survey.\u00a0 However, NHANES began collecting height and weight data among adults aged 20-74 in 1960-1962.\u00a0 At that time, obesity prevalence was 13.4% and severe obesity prevalence was 0.9%.<\/p>\n

\n

Q<\/strong>: Was there a specific finding in the data that surprised you?<\/p>\n

CH<\/em><\/strong>:\u00a0 What I found most striking is that more than 40% of adults in the US had obesity in 2017-2018, which is more than 10 percentage points higher than the prevalence was in 1999-2000.\u00a0 The prevalence of severe obesity among adults has almost doubled from 4.7% in 1999-2000 to 9.2% in 2017-2018.\u00a0 The prevalence of obesity and severe obesity in 2017-2018 is the highest ever reported among all U.S. adults.<\/p>\n

\n

Q<\/strong>: When will you have 2017-2018 children\u2019s obesity data available?<\/p>\n

CH<\/em><\/strong>: \u00a0NHANES height and weight data for children and adolescents are currently available on the NHANES website.\u00a0 Estimates for obesity and severe obesity among children and adolescents will be published in the near future.<\/p>\n

\n

Q<\/strong>:\u00a0 Anything else you\u2019d like to note about the new report?<\/p>\n

CH<\/em><\/strong>:\u00a0 Measured height and weight is the gold standard for generating accurate estimates of obesity prevalence.\u00a0 The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey is unique in that it combines both interviews in the home and physical examinations in mobile examination centers, and it is the only national survey where people\u2019s height and weight are physically measured.<\/p>\n

Other surveys report obesity prevalence based on self-reported height and weight, but several studies have found serious inaccuracies with self-reported or proxy-reported height and weight.\u00a0 Among adults, self-reported height tends to be overreported and weight is underreported, although misreporting can vary among subgroups of the population \u2013 but this misreporting leads to underestimates of obesity prevalence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Questions for Craig Hales, Health Statistician and Lead Author of \u201cPrevalence of Obesity and Severe Obesity Among Adults: United States, 2017\u20132018.\u201d Q: How has the prevalence of obesity and severe obesity in U.S. adults changed since 1999-2000? CH: The prevalence of obesity and severe obesity among U.S. adults increased since 1999-2000.\u00a0 The prevalence of obesity<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":195,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50899,15129],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/nchs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}