Overweight and Obesity Behavior in Mexican School-Age Children Attending to Public Elementary Schools During 2015 to 2018 Period

Abstract

Abstract Objectives To document the behavior of overweight and obesity among school-age population, that attends to public elementary schools through four consecutive school years. Methods An epidemiological, descriptive study, that consisted on four transversal yearly and consecutive stages from August 2015 to December 2018. Applied a Generalized Ordinal Logistic Regression model and the relative risk (RR) calculation. Country region, rural or urban locality and marginalization index (MI) of the school were used as socio demographic variables. Overweight and obesity prevalences where adjusted through the marginal probabilities estimators. The databases used were the public versions of the results of the National Weight and Height Registry (Registro Nacional de Peso y Talla in Spanish) from the Mexico National Nutrition Institute. Results A total of 59,724 schools were evaluated from which 17’491,685 anthropometries were obtained for the four school years. Regarding RR evaluation, from the regression model we were able to identify statistically significant differences (P < 0.001) by sex, rural or urban locality, MI, and age in the two panels (Panel 1 Overweight development, Panel 2: Obesity development). Urban school-age population shown a RR greater by 22.2% for develop overweight and 25% for obesity when comparing with the rural. RR 74% and 104% greater were identified for develop overweight and obesity respectively for school children with very low MI in comparison with those with high MI. Men displayed a 20% greater RR of develop overweight when they previously had a normal nutritional status and a RR 46% greater of develop obesity when they came from a normal or overweight nutritional status when compared with women. Adjusted prevalences analysis allowed to observe how the Center Region (unlike North and south regions), shown a decreasing trend in the probability of develop overweight in the 2015–2018 period. Conclusions We identified an accelerated increase in a relatively short period of time in the South region, rural localities and high MI. The results from National Weight and Height Registry provide the evidence at local level allow us to have a closer overview of the actual situation, to the changes and challenges that the Mexican school-age. Funding Sources Nutrition Direction of National Nutrition Institute “Salvador Zubirán” provided the resources for this study.