Availability of State-Based Obesity Surveillance Data on High School Students with Disabilities in the United States
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Availability of State-Based Obesity Surveillance Data on High School Students with Disabilities in the United States Kiyoshi Yamaki • Brienne Davis Lowry • Emilie Buscaj • Leigh Zisko • James H. Rimmer
Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract The aim of this study was to assess the availability of public health surveillance data on obesity among American children with disabilities in state-based surveillance programs. We reviewed annual cross-sectional datasets in state-level surveillance programs for high school students, implemented 2001–2011, for the inclusion of weight and height and disability screening questions. When datasets included a disability screen, its content and consistency of use across years were examined. We identified 54 surveillance programs with 261 annual datasets containing obesity data. Twelve surveillance programs in 11 states included a disability screening question that could be used to extract obesity data for high school students with disabilities, leaving the other 39 states with no state-level obesity data for students with disabilities. A total of 43 annual datasets, 16.5 % of the available datasets, could be used to estimate the obesity status of students with disabilities. The frequency of use of disability questions varied across states, and the content of the questions often changed across years and within a state. We concluded that state surveillance programs rarely contained questions that could be used to identify high school students with disabilities. This limits the availability of data that can be used to monitor obesity and related health statuses among this population in the majority of states.
K. Yamaki (&) B. D. Lowry E. Buscaj L. Zisko Department of Disability and Human Development, College of Applied Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1640 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago, IL 60608, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. H. Rimmer University of Alabama at Birmingham/Lakeshore Foundation Research Collaborative, 4000 Ridgeway Dr, Birmingham, AL 35209, USA
Keywords High school Disability Obesity State Surveillance
Introduction Obesity is a critical health problem among American children. One in five children is obese [1]. This ratio increases to one in three when including children who are overweight. Childhood obesity leads to an increased risk of adverse health consequences, including higher cholesterol [2, 3], hypertension [4, 5], diabetes [6, 7], asthma [8, 9], obstructive sleep apnea [10], joint disease and musculoskeletal pain [11, 12], gastrointestinal problems, liver and gallbladder problems, and early maturation [2, 13, 14]. Obese children may also experience poorer psychological and emotional health, suffering from depression, low selfesteem, limited peer relationships, and body dissatisfaction [2, 15, 16]. Because obese children are likely to become obese adults and have health consequences that track into their adult lives [2], childhood obesity can have a longlasting impact on quality of life beyond childhood. Obesity
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