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GAO-06-127R 1 (2005-10-07)

handle is hein.gao/gaocrptasel0001 and id is 1 raw text is: SGAO Accountability * Integrity * Reliability United States Government Accountability Office Washington, DC 20548 October 7, 2005 Congressional Requesters Subject: Childhood Obesity: Most Experts Identified Physical Activity and the Use of Best Practices as Key to Successful Programs In the past 30 years, the number of obese children' has increased throughout the United States, leading some policy makers to rank childhood obesity as a critical public health threat. The rate of childhood obesity has more than tripled for children between the ages of 6 and 11 and also increased for children of other ages over the same period.2 According to a 2005 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, there are approximately 9 million children nationwide over the age of 6 who are considered obese. An important consequence of childhood obesity is the increasing number of children experiencing illnesses and other health problems associated with obesity, such as hypertension and type II diabetes. The rise in obesity-related health conditions also introduces added economic costs. Between 1979 and 1999, obesity- associated hospital costs for children between the ages of 6 and 17 more than tripled, from $35 million to $127 million. Moreover, because studies suggest that obese children are likely to become overweight or obese adults-particularly if the children are obese during adolescence-the increase in the number of obese children may 'In this report, the term obese refers to children who are considered both overweight and at risk for overweight according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) standards for child- specific body mass index (BMI) scores, as well as both overweight and obese adults. BMI is an indirect measure of body fat calculated as the ratio of a person's body weight in kilograms to the square of a person's height in meters. According to CDC's 2000 growth charts, children are overweight when their BMI is at or above the 95t' percentile for their age and gender, while children between the 85t' and 95t' percentile are considered at risk of being overweight. BMI for children, also referred to as BMI-for-age, is gender and age specific because the percentage of body fat in children changes as they grow and because body fat in girls and boys differs. Adults are considered overweight when their BMI is between 25.0 and 29.9 and obese when their BMI is 30.0 or above. In addition, in this report, the term children refers to anyone under the age of 18. 2These data are for children at or above the 95 percentile of BMI for age and gender. Cynthia L. Ogden, Katherine M. Flegal, Margaret D. Carroll, and Clifford L. Johnson, Prevalence and Trends in Overweight Among US Children and Adolescents, 1999-2000, JAMA, vol. 288, no. 14 (2002) and Allison A. Hedley, Cynthia L. Ogden, Clifford L. Johnson, Margaret D. Carroll, Lester R. Curtin, and Katherine M. Flegal, Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity Among US Children, Adolescents, and Adults, 1999- 2002, JAMA, vol. 291, no. 23 (2004). 3Institute of Medicine, Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005). 4These data are in 2001 dollars and reflect the change from 1979-1981 to 1997-1999. Guijing Wang and William H. Dietz, Economic Burden of Obesity in Youths Aged 6 to 17 Years: 1979 - 1999, Pediatrics, vol. 109 (2002). GAO-06-127R Childhood Obesity

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