594 - Obesity Trends in 2-17 Year Olds Before, During, and After the Pandemic

Poster Number: 594
Publication Number: 594.3337

Background: Pediatric obesity is a chronic illness with an incidence of 1 in 5 children in the US. Recent literature suggests that obesity rates increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. What remains unclear is pediatric obesity trends post-pandemic.

Objective: The objective is to explore pediatric obesity rates before, during, and post-pandemic. We hypothesize that obesity will affect older age groups more than younger age groups and that obesity rates will fall in the post-pandemic period.

Design/Methods: Data was gathered from the outpatient EMR for patients in Central and Southern Illinois from January 2018 to March 2023. Data was analyzed comparing 3 time periods: pre-pandemic (2018-2019), during the pandemic (2020-2021) and post-pandemic (2022-2023). Further sub-group analysis was done between 3 age groups: 2-5 years old, 6-11 years old, and 12-17 years old as well as by race. As there were several patients with many visits, the last BMI for each patient for that calendar year was recorded. Please note that for this project, level of significance is at the 0.01 level.

Results: A total of 86,262 visits met inclusion criteria. For each time period, patients were similar in terms race, gender, and age group with p-values > 0.01 (Table 1). Obesity rates increased from a pre-pandemic rate of 23.4% to 26.0% during pandemic and decreased to 25.2% post pandemic. These rate changes were statistically significant with a p-value < 0.001. Obesity rates in Black and White patients were consistent with this trend. However, obesity increased approximately 5% during the pandemic in Black patients, whereas it approximately increased by 3% in White patients. Post-pandemic, obesity decreased by around 1% in Black patients and around 3% in White patients. These differences in race during these time periods had statistical significance with a p-value < 0.001 (Table 2).
Obesity rates across all age groups increased during pandemic and decreased post-pandemic, which had a p-value < 0.01 (Figure 1). This effect was more pronounced in the Black population, but only for the 6-11 and 12-17 year old age groups, with p-values < 0.001. There was no statistical significance between races in the 2-5 year old age group.

Conclusion(s): Obesity rates significantly increased during pandemic and decreased post-pandemic which affected all age groups. The overall trend of increase and decrease in obesity was similar in all races but affected Black patients more so than White patients. Black patients had higher rate of increase from pre-pandemic to pandemic and slower decrease post-pandemic than their White counterparts.