Pediatric obesity and body weight following the COVID-19 pandemic

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Updated: Oct 11, 2025

Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
09:36

Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study

Published on: February 2, 2017

27.3K

Gal Dubnov-Raz1,2, Shay Maor1, Tomer Ziv-Baran2

  • 1The Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, Israel.

Child: Care, Health and Development
|December 4, 2021
PubMed

Insights

The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns significantly increased children's weight and obesity rates, particularly in preschoolers. Further research is needed to understand these effects in diverse populations.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Health
  • Epidemiology
  • Public Health

Background:

  • The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns drastically altered children's lifestyles.
  • The impact of these lifestyle changes on pediatric weight and obesity remains largely unknown.
  • This study investigated changes in children's body weight and obesity prevalence in Israel.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To compare body weight and obesity rates in children before and after the major COVID-19 lockdown periods in Israel.
  • To analyze the effect of pandemic-related lifestyle changes on pediatric weight status.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized medical records from pediatric emergency department visits for routine weight measurements.
  • Compared weight and obesity prevalence in Q4 2020 (n=2468) against Q4 2018-2019 (n=5300).
  • Transformed weight data into age- and sex-specific standard-deviation-scores (SDS) for analysis.

Main Results:

  • A mean increase of 0.07 in Weight-SDS was observed during the first six months of the pandemic.
  • This increase in Weight-SDS was statistically significant only in the preschooler age group.
  • Obesity rates in preschoolers rose by 37%, from 8.1% to 11.1% (p=0.01).

Conclusions:

  • Weight-SDS and obesity prevalence increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a notable impact on younger children.
  • The findings highlight a specific vulnerability in preschoolers to pandemic-related lifestyle changes affecting weight.
  • Further research across different populations is recommended to validate and expand upon these findings.
Abstract

Keywords:
childrencoronaviruselectronic medical recordsemergency roomoverweight

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