American kids have become increasingly unhealthy over nearly two decades, new study finds
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'The health of kids in America is not as good as it should be, not as good as the other countries, and the current policies of this administration are definitely going to make it worse,' said Dr. Frederick Rivara, a pediatrician and researcher at the Seattle Children's Hospital and UW Medicine in Seattle. He coauthored an editorial accompanying the new study.
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Forrest and his colleagues analyzed surveys, electronic health records from 10 pediatric health systems, and international mortality statistics. Among their findings:
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♦ Obesity rates for US children 2-19 years old rose from 17 percent in 2007-2008 to about 21 percent in 2021-2023.
♦ A US child in 2023 was 15 percent to 20 percent more likely than a US child in 2011 to have a chronic condition such as anxiety, depression, or sleep apnea, according to data reported by parents and doctors.
♦ Annual prevalence rates for 97 chronic conditions recorded by doctors rose from about 40 percent in 2011 to about 46 percent in 2023.
♦ Early onset of menstruation, trouble sleeping, limitations in activity, physical symptoms, depressive symptoms, and loneliness also increased among American children during the study period.
♦ American children were around 1.8 times more likely to die than youngsters in other high-income countries from 2007-2022. Being born premature and sudden unexpected death were much higher among US infants, and firearm-related incidents and motor vehicle crashes were much more common among 1- to 19-year-old American children than among those the same age in other countries examined.
The research points to bigger problems with America's health, said Forrest, who is a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
'Kids are the canaries in the coal mine,' he said. 'When kids' health changes, it's because they're at increased vulnerability, and it reflects what's happening in society at large.'
The timing of the study, he said, is 'completely fortuitous.' Well before the 2024 presidential election, Forrest was working on a book about thriving over the lifespan and couldn't find this sort of comprehensive data on children's health.
The datasets analyzed have some limitations and may not be applicable to the full US population, noted Dr. James Perrin, a pediatrician and spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, who wasn't involved in the study.
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'The basic finding is true,' he said.
The editorial published alongside the study said while the administration's MAHA movement is bringing welcome attention to chronic diseases, 'it is pursuing other policies that will work against the interests of children.' Those include eliminating injury prevention and maternal health programs, canceling investments in a campaign addressing sudden infant death, and 'fueling vaccine hesitancy among parents that may lead to a resurgence of deadly vaccine-preventable diseases,' authors wrote.
Officials from the US Health and Human Services Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Forrest said risks highlighted by the MAHA report, such as eating too much ultra-processed food, are real but miss the complex reality driving trends in children's health.
'We have to step back and take some lessons from the ecological sustainability community and say: Let's look at the ecosystem that kids are growing up in. And let's start on a kind of neighborhood-by-neighborhood, city-by-city basis, examining it,' he said.
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