Introduction
In my final project, the research question that I am trying to answer with real data and studies previously done in the United States is to try and estimate or gauge the impact that differences in socioeconomic status, educational status, and income brackets have contributed to the current obesity trends in the United States. This question is important given that the recent reports by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States have shown that at least four out of ten Americans are obese. Obesity and overweight issues have been declared a public health crisis in the country. Obesity is quickly becoming a common, serious, very costly disease in the country given that in most of the health coverages and insurances provided for by the government, obesity and overweight problems are not fully insured. This makes it very expensive to afford treatment. By 2022, more than one third of adults in the United States are obese. This is really serious given that obesity is linked to more than sixty (60) chronic illnesses. The deadliest chronic disease that is linked to obesity is cancer. Research by The American Cancer Society that was published in 2019 stated that obesity in adults is increases the chances of colon cancer by up to 53%. This is even more serious when there is history of obesity and/or cancer illnesses in the family (CDC Report, 2020).
The contributors to obesity have all been laid out by the CDC. They include poor diet and nutrition, genetics, health conditions and medications, and other mental problem issues such as stress, emotional factors, depression, anxiety, and lack of sleep. In 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States released their research that they had been compiling for about twenty years. This document was trying to research the causes and prevention methods of some of the deadliest public health problems in America such as cancer, hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. In the part of obesity, this research found out that the US overweightness pervasiveness was 42.4% in 2017 and 2018. Since 2000 up to 2018, US overweightness frequency improved from 31% to 42%. Also, the commonness of serious overweightness enlarged from 4.7% to 9.2%. Compared to the world statistics, (Overall, about 13% of the world’s adult population – 11% of men and 15% of women, were obese in 2016. The worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly tripled between 1975 and 2016), the United States has the highest obesity and overweight prevalence in the world. Then there is the study on how much it costs to treat obesity in America. Back in 2008, the estimated annual medical cost of treating or managing obesity problems was reported by CDC at $147 billion. it has increased over the years, making it even harder and more expensive. In the same research of 2008 by the CDC, with the individual scope of things, medical costs for people who had obesity was $1,429 higher than medical costs for people with healthy weight. This is why it is important to discuss the problem of obesity and address it as the public health crisis it has grown to become in the United States (Smith, 2016).
Data Sources
The major sources of data that I used in this report and in answering this research question were obtained mainly from The American Cancer Society and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States. These two bodies have the official data and statistics when it comes to any health crisis that is considered a crisis in America. Some researches dated back to 1990s, while some of the statistics were updated to sound relevant even in 2022. One major outlier that I have not discussed in this report is the statistic by various studies that term maternal obesity as the all-time strongest obesity predictor (McMillan, 2006). This might be true, but the contradiction then comes in when the are equally more men in the United States that suffer with obesity and yet they do not experience birth or maternal side effects. The other outlier that I excluded from this report is the study by experts in health matters in America; Raul Rosenthal and John Morton in 2017 which found that obesity is associated with poorer mental health outcomes and reduced quality of life. I consider this finding an outlier for the simple fact that some of the most serious obesity cases have been discovered among the wealthy and people with higher incomes in the society. It therefore becomes a contradiction (Rosenthal and Morton, 2017).
The Modelling of This Data
The studies by The American Cancer Society and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States on the problem of obesity in America used majorly the OLS (Ordinary Least Squares) Regression as the model specification to try and breakdown the data and statistics from the studies. This model combined other two model specifications of dependent and independent variables. The variables considered for this research were mainly; educational background, income status, and socioeconomic status. With the use of these three variables, this research could then be divided into other groups with regards to ethnicity and groups. It is historically known that Native Americans have always been disadvantaged in the process of attaining proper and quality health care services. This has even stretched when it comes to obesity problems. This negligence has resulted in some very astonishing obesity statistics among Native Americans. African American males (50%) registered a high prevalence of obesity, then the Latino grown-ups (45%), White American grown-ups (43%) and Asian grown-ups (18%). White Americans who have obesity problems are privileged to better health care and treatment as compared to Native Americans. This has also meant that most deaths caused by obesity are experienced by people of color in the US. The other modelling specification used by CDC to relay these statistics on the epidemic of obesity in America was done by conducting data analysis in all the fifty states in the United States. The results stated that zero out of the thirty-five states that provided enough statistics o be evaluated had obesity prevalence below 35%. 22 out of all the 50 states in the United States had obesity prevalence of above 35%. Obesity prevalence among Hispanic Americans and African Americans in all these states that provided sufficient data to be evaluated and analyzed was found to be higher than the obesity prevalence among white Americans (American Cancer Society, 2018).
Findings
The findings from the research and statistical data led me to the following findings. Educational status is a very significant factor when it comes to the obesity trends in America. People with higher educational backgrounds and have studied up to higher levels are more educated and knowledgeable about the health crisis that is obesity and overweight issues. With this knowledge, the educated groups know that they have to eat a certain diet and that they have to exercise and always go for doctors’ appointments in order to prevent them from suffering obesity problems. This also goes for the incomes brackets factor. People on higher income levels are always accustomed to getting better health care and treatment plans that people of lower income levels. Also, with higher incomes, it is easier to afford the expensive medication and rugs that are required in treating and managing obesity. People with lower incomes sometimes find it hard to raise money for the costly treatment plans given that obesity is only partly insured by both Medicare and Medicaid in the United States. This is to say that indeed socioeconomic differences have a great impact in the obesity trends in America and given that poverty rates are higher among Hispanic Americans and African Americans, it is statistically correct to conclude that obesity trends tend to be higher among the poor or lower income earning Americans for the same reason of not being able to afford the required treatment plans and healthcare assistance, and not being able to eat the correct dietary and nutritional recommendations (Hales and Ogden, 2017).
Conclusion
With the obesity and overweight trends reported in the findings of this research by the American Cancer Society and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, it is relevant to conclude that obesity is an epidemic and not just merely a health crisis in the United States. The CDC has forecasted that by 2030, obesity and all the other health epidemics and chronic diseases such as cancer, high blood pressure, and diabetes will be the highest prevalence killers. The CDC ends their 2020 report on health crisis and epidemics in America by suggesting some dietary and nutritional recommendations; vegetables, white meat, and healthy carbs. Eating a well nutritious diet can help maintain your weight, improve your sleep quality, and lower your blood pressure. The CDC is also encouraging more adults over the age of 45 years and suffering with obesity to go for regular screening to ensure that they have not started developing any cancerous symptoms such as the deadly colon cancer (CDC Report, 2020).
References
American Cancer Society. (2018). Rising Obesity in the United States Is a Public Health Crisis. https://blog.livelyhealth.org/ci/?gclid=CjwKCAjwur-SBhB6EiwA5sKtjhQtwLl_8_pPDH7-Trmzq0oCDfbwdiHs3NKLBdu_F6ihDllFW5XUihoCJnYQAvD_BwE
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States. (2020). The CDC 2020 Adult Obesity Prevalence Maps for 50 states, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html
Hales, C. M., Carroll, M. D., Fryar, C. D., & Ogden, C. L. (2017). Prevalence of obesity among adults and youth: United States, 2015–2016. https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/49223
Lew, E. A. (1985). Mortality and weight: insured lives and the American Cancer Society studies. Annals of Internal Medicine, 103(6_Part_2), 1024-1029. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/abs/10.7326/0003-4819-103-6-1024
McMillan, D. C., Sattar, N., Lean, M., & McArdle, C. S. (2006). Obesity and cancer. Bmj, 333(7578), 1109-1111. https://www.bmj.com/content/333/7578/1109?grp=1
Rosenthal, R. J., Morton, J., Brethauer, S., Mattar, S., De Maria, E., Benz, J. K., … & Sterrett, D. (2017). Obesity in America. Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, 13(10), 1643-1650. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550728917303726
Smith, K. B., & Smith, M. S. (2016). Obesity statistics. Primary care: clinics in office practice, 43(1), 121-135. https://www.primarycare.theclinics.com/article/S0095-4543(15)00098-6/abstract
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