Increasing disparities in obesity and severe obesity prevalence among public elementary and middle school students in New York City, school years 2011–12 through 2019–20

Recent national trends in the United States indicate a significant increase in childhood obesity, a major public health concern with documented physical and mental comorbidities and sociodemographic disparities. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of obesity and severe obesity among youth in New York City (NYC) before the COVID-19 pandemic and examine time trends overall and by key characteristics. We included all valid height and weight measurements of kindergarten through 8th grade public school students aged 5 to 15 from school years 2011–12 through 2019–20 (N = 1,370,890 unique students; 5,254,058 observations). Obesity and severe obesity were determined using age- and sex-specific body mass index percentiles based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth charts. Analyses were performed using multivariate logistic regression models with repeated cross-sectional observations weighted to represent the student population for each year and clustered by student and school. Among youth attending public elementary and middle schools in NYC, we estimate that 20.9% and 6.4% had obesity and severe obesity, respectively, in 2019–20. While consistent declines in prevalence were observed overall from 2011–12 to 2019–20 (2.8% relative decrease in obesity and 0.2% in severe obesity, p