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Associations of childhood obesity with health and academic outcomes in childhood and adolescence: A population-based linkage study

Sat, October 6, 10:45am to 12:15pm, Doubletree Hilton, Room: Redrock

Abstract

Background: Overweight and obesity in childhood and youth are major public health concerns. It has been estimated that approximately 20% of pre-school children in high income countries are obese or overweight. Research examining the association of obesity in early childhood and developmental outcomes from a longitudinal and population-level perspective is lacking. Addressing this gap, using longitudinal data linkages of multiple population-based datasets, we examined the association of childhood obesity with (i) developmental health outcomes in Kindergarten; (ii) mental health conditions in childhood through early adolescence; (iii) and academic outcomes in grade 4.
Methods: The longitudinal population-based linkages include birth records, administrative health and education data, census data, and teacher-ratings of child development in British Columbia (BC), Canada. The database contains information from birth through adolescence for the BC birth cohorts 1993 to 2006 that include over 40,000 children per cohort. Obesity categories (yes/no) before age 6 and mental health conditions (depression, anxiety, conduct disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from age 2-14) were derived from physician’s billing codes recorded in provincial health insurance data. Kindergarten teacher-rated developmental health outcomes at age 5 were assessed via the Early Development Instrument (EDI) on 5 domains (physical health, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills). Academic outcomes (numeracy, reading, writing) were based on BC Ministry of Education’s Foundational Skills Assessment data, containing test scores from universal Grade 4 standardized exams. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the association of obesity with these outcomes, controlling for gender, neighborhood-level income, and birth weight. Due to the varying linkages, the sample size for the regression analyses varied between n=135,823 and n= 658,208.
Results: Controlling for confounding factors, childhood obesity was significantly associated with developmental vulnerability on all domains of the EDI (range of aOR = 1.2–1.5), the four mental health conditions by early adolescence (range of aOR = 1.2—1.9), and lower writing scores in grade 4 (aOR for writing = 1.3).
Conclusion: Childhood obesity is associated with concurrent and long-term detrimental outcomes across developmental domains including physical and mental health, and academic outcomes. This underscores the importance of supporting the healthy development of children in the early years.

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