Abstract
Mexico has one of the highest overweight and obesity rates in the world. Our objective is to describe the tendency of overweight and obesity by sex, health service affiliation, and socioeconomic tertile (T1,2,3), and to give examples of public policies derived from the results of the Mexican National Health and Nutrition Surveys (ENSANUT). Data come from the 2006, 2012, and 2016 ENSANUTs, which are probabilistic surveys that allow us to make inferences at the national level, on urban and rural strata and regions; their coverage includes all the population age groups. We assessed overweight and obesity (OW + O) in all population groups. The prevalence of OW + O in preschool children was lower in T1 in all the surveys, and shows an increase by year of survey, according to the health service affiliation. In school-age women, prevalence increased over the 10 years of evaluation, in spite of the high prevalence in both genders in T3. Adolescent behavior is similar and, in adults, the prevalence of OW + O shows an increase by year of survey, gender, and affiliation, with the differences not explained by socioeconomic tertile. In conclusion, the ENSANUT series represents a surveillance system that allow us to observe the changes in overweight and obesity prevalence over the time, showing a high prevalence of OW + O in the population, and has contributed to public policy enhancement.
Highlights
The National Health Survey System in Mexico includes a series of multi-thematic surveys on health and nutrition; the health surveys are probabilistic and representative at the national level and include diverse geographic areas and population sub-groups
Considering that the state-level estimators obtained by the survey should have a maximum relative error of 25%, a confidence level of 95%, a non-response rate of 20%, and a design effect of 1.7, it was determined that the sample size would need to include at least 1476 households
In Mexico, a high prevalence of overweight and obesity is present in the population older than five years of age
Summary
The National Health Survey System in Mexico includes a series of multi-thematic surveys on health and nutrition; the health surveys are probabilistic and representative at the national level and include diverse geographic areas and population sub-groups. These surveys have given the country useful information with which to plan and evaluate the performance of the Mexican health system, since they provide precise, detailed, and representative information on the population’s state of health. The 1986 ENSA (National Health Survey) [1] was the first national health survey and its objective was to describe the health characteristics of Mexicans; ENSA was repeated in 1994 [2] and in 2000 [3].
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