Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-7-2024

Abstract

The rates of obesity among American children aged 2–5 years has reached a historic high. It is crucial to identify the putative sources of population-level increases in obesity prevalence among preschool-aged children because early childhood is a critical window for obesity prevention and thus reduction of future incidence. We used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data and hierarchical age–period–cohort analysis to examine lifecycle (i.e., age), historical (i.e., period), and generational (i.e., cohort) distribution of age- and sex-specific body mass index z-scores (zBMI) among 2–5-year-olds in the U.S. from 1999 to 2018. Our current findings indicate that period effects, rather than differences in groups born at a specific time (i.e., cohort effects), account for almost all of the observed changes in zBMI. We need a broad socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental strategy to counteract the current obesogenic environment that influences children of all ages and generations in order to reach large segments of preschoolers and achieve population-wide improvement.

Comments

This article was originally published in Heliyon, volume 10, issue 12, in 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e32603

This article was the recipient of a Chapman University Supporting Open Access Research and Scholarship (SOARS) award, but publication costs were ultimately covered by the Elsevier read-and-publish agreement.

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The authors

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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