Adult obesity prevalence in Canada and the United States

Abstract

Obesity is a public health challenge throughout the world. Ongoing monitoring of trends in obesity is important to assess interventions aimed at preventing or reducing the burden of obesity. Since the 1960s, measured height and weight have been collected in the United States as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). In Canada, data on measured height and weight have been collected from nationally representative samples of the population less regularly. This changed in 2007 with the launch of the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS), the scope and purpose of which are similar to those of NHANES. The objective of this report is to compare estimates of the prevalence of obesity between Canadian and American adults.