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Children and teens ages 10 to 17 who are overweight or obese in the United States

Change Indicator

Why This Indicator Matters

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Children and teens ages 10 to 17 who are overweight or obese

Data Provided By
Note: Non-consecutive years appear adjacent in the trend line
because one or more years have been deselected.

Definitions: The share of children and teens ages 10 to 17 who are overweight and obese.
For this indicator, children between the 85th and 95th percentile BMI-for-age are categorized as overweight, and children at or above the 95th percentile BMI-for-age are characterized as obese. The National Survey of Children's Health uses height and weight, as reported by the parent or most knowledgeable adult, to determine a child's Body Mass Index, or BMI, which is used to determine if a child is overweight. The BMI is age- and gender-specific.

Data Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, National Survey of Children’s Health.
For more information on the NSCH, see http://childhealthdata.org/learn/NSCH.

Footnotes: Updated January 2022
S - Estimates suppressed when the 95% confidence interval is greater than 20 percentage points or 1.2 times the estimate.
N.A. – Data not available. Children and teens ages 10 to 17 who are overweight or obese.