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SUMMARY

The Linked CENTURY Study: Linking three decades of Clinical and Public health data

to examine disparities in Childhood Obesity

Purpose

Despite fall in childhood obesity in US; there is no evidence that the rest of the world has

also experienced same progress. Examining racial and socioeconomic factors regarding

differences in childhood obesity can help in identifying precautionary interventions among

people who are comparatively at greater risk. According to life course epidemiology, factors

during the start and end of pregnancy affect the development of obesity from early life till

adulthood. Besides, exposure to antibiotics during the first year of birth and caesarian deliveries

has also added to this problem. Factors including access to food, prospects for physical activities

and neighborhood dispossession are the proposed contributing elements to this modern age

dilemma at macro level. These factors also explain to a large extent, the cause of ethnic

differences in obesity at childhood level. However, there have been certain limitations regarding

the current epidemiologic studies of early life including limited sources of data in US with low

degree of information about the pre and post natal risk factors, weight and height across

childhood and socioeconomic diversity and addresses.

The purpose of the article was to develop Linked Century study by means of creating a

link between the Century study, which is a clinical database entailing data regarding measured

weight and height along with birth certificate of every child in Massachusetts. Secondly this

article was aimed at discussing the medical, epidemiologic and public health inferences of this

study in relation to the causes of inequalities in childhood obesity.


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Findings

74.25 of the records matched successfully leading to 200,343 children in the Linked

CENTURY Study with 1,580,597 well child visits. 94% of the children were identified as those

whose father information was available on the birth certificate and 60.9% of the children were

reported to have at least one other sibling. In terms of ethnicity, it was found that 75.7 % of

children were white, 11.6 % black, 4.6 % Hispanic, and 5.7 % Asian. Based on socio-

demographic information from the birth certificate, 20.0 % of mothers were non-US born, 5.9 %

smoked during pregnancy, 76.3 % initiated breastfeeding, and 11.0 % of mothers had their

delivery paid for by public health insurance. Using clinical data from the CENTURY Study, 22.7

% of children had a weight-for-length 95th percentile between 1 and 24 months and 12.0 % of

children had a body mass index 95th percentile at ages 5 and 17 years.

Conclusion

Childhood obesity is one of the major dilemmas of todays world with its origins in the

earliest phases of life and affect children from diverse ethnic groups and underprivileged

backgrounds in a disproportionate manner. Moreover, by creating a link between clinical

database and each childs birth certificate, Linked Century study has got the potential to identify

the etiology of ethnic and socioeconomic dipartites in childhood obesity.


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Reference

Hawkins, S., Gillman, M., Rifas-Shiman, S., Kleinman, K., Mariotti, M. and Taveras, E. (2016).

The Linked CENTURY Study: linking three decades of clinical and public health data to

examine disparities in childhood obesity. BMC Pediatrics, 16(1).

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