ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to cover three aspects of the epidemiology of childhood obesity: definition and assessment, changes in prevalence over time, and the prediction of future obesity. Accruing evidence has linked obesity to morbidity and mortality from a wide variety of chronic diseases, including heart disease, hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, and most recently cancer, making obesity one of the most serious public health issues of our time. When a condition such as obesity is increasing at the rate seen over the past few decades, it is obviously important to keep track of the “epidemic” by monitoring its prevalence over time in a range of different situations. There are other good reasons to monitor prevalence. The first requirement for prevalence studies is a clear and unambiguous definition of the condition. Obesity is at its simplest excess adiposity, thus a definition requires a way to measure adiposity and a cutoff to identify at what point adiposity becomes excessive.
