Quality-Adjusted Life Years Lost Due to Obesity Doubles

A study by Haomiao Jia from Columbia University (New York, USA), and Erica I. Lubetkin from The City College of New York (New York, USA) indicates that Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) lost to U.S. adults due to morbidity and mortality from obesity have more than doubled from 1993-2008 and the prevalence of obesity has increased 89.9% during the same period.   The team used data from the 1993-2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the largest ongoing state- based health survey of U.S. adults, examining for trends in the burden of obesity by estimating the obesity-related QALYs lost. They found that the overall health burden of obesity has significantly increased since 1993 and such increases were observed in all gender and race/ethnicity subgroups and across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The researchers hope that their findings “would enable the impact of evidence-based interventions to be assessed on targeted populations and subgroups, promote continuous quality improvement through monitoring trends, and facilitate head-to-head comparisons with other modifiable health behaviors/risk factors and diseases.”