Secular trends in prevalence of overweight and obesity over a decade in urban and rural South Indian children integrated with geographic information system

Context: The globalization in the process most of the rural sectors are also upgrading technically with digitalization with more availability of smart phones and gaming along with the refined food influences on the present-day children is causing a trend of overweight among the children. Aims: To arrive at the prevalence of overweight and obesity considering the Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) cut-offs for growth standards among children aged 12 years from the rural and urban areas of Mysuru District. Methods and Material: The present program was the third large scale community intervention project carried out including the 7 talukas of Mysuru District which focused on the measurement of the Body mass index (BMI). In this phase between the year 2019 and 2020 anthropometric measurements were undertaken in 1602 urban and rural children aged 12 years from government-funded and privately-funded schools of Mysuru District. Statistical Analysis Used: The results were analysed statistically using SPSS for Windows (version 23.0) and the t-test, Chi-square test and proportion tests, P value were reported. Results: As per the IAP reference ranges the prevalence of obesity was 5.5% and overweight was 7.1% among children of Mysuru District. Conclusions: We report that this increase was significantly higher in girls than boys. There was an increasing trend in rural sectors; however, the obese children were more predominantly distributed among the urban sectors. This calls for a precise preventive measure to fulfil the goal of the World Health Organization (WHO) to control prevalence of childhood obesity by the year 2022.