{"id":46521,"date":"2025-07-07T17:33:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T17:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/46521\/"},"modified":"2025-07-07T17:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T17:33:11","slug":"us-children-are-growing-increasingly-unhealthy-new-study-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/46521\/","title":{"rendered":"US children are growing increasingly unhealthy, new study says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The health of U.S. children<\/a> has deteriorated over the past 17 years, with kids today more likely to have obesity<\/a>, chronic diseases and mental health problems like depression, a new study<\/a> says. <\/p>\n

Much of what researchers found was already known, but the study paints a comprehensive picture by examining various aspects of children\u2019s physical and mental health at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe surprising part of the study wasn\u2019t any with any single statistic; it was that there\u2019s 170 indicators, eight data sources, all showing the same thing: a generalized decline in kids\u2019 health,\u201d said Dr. Christopher Forrest, one of the authors of the study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.<\/p>\n

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought children\u2019s health to the forefront of the national policy conversation, unveiling in May a much-anticipated \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d report<\/a> that described kids as undernourished and overmedicated, and raised concerns about their lack of physical activity. But the Trump administration\u2019s actions<\/a> \u2014 including cuts to federal health agencies<\/a>, Medicaid<\/a> and scientific research<\/a> \u2014 are not likely to reverse the trend, according to outside experts who reviewed Monday\u2019s study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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,\u201d said Dr. Frederick Rivara, a pediatrician and researcher at the Seattle Children\u2019s Hospital and UW Medicine in Seattle. He co-authored an editorial accompanying the new study<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Forrest and his colleagues analyzed surveys, electronic health records from 10 pediatric health systems and international mortality statistics. Among their findings:<\/p>\n

\u2014 Obesity rates for U.S. children 2-19 years old rose from 17% in 2007-2008 to about 21% in 2021-2023.<\/p>\n

\u2014 A U.S. child in 2023 was 15% to 20% more likely than a U.S. child in 2011 to have a chronic condition such as anxiety, depression or sleep apnea, according to data reported by parents and doctors.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Annual prevalence rates for 97 chronic conditions recorded by doctors rose from about 40% in 2011 to about 46% in 2023. <\/p>\n

\u2014 Early onset of menstruation, trouble sleeping, limitations in activity, physical symptoms, depressive symptoms and loneliness also increased among American kids during the study period.<\/p>\n

\u2014 American children were around 1.8 times more likely to die than kids in other high-income countries from 2007-2022. Being born premature and sudden unexpected death were much higher among U.S. infants, and firearm-related incidents and motor vehicle crashes were much more common among 1-19-year-old American kids than among those the same age in other countries examined.<\/p>\n

The research points to bigger problems with America\u2019s health, said Forrest, who is a pediatrician at the Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia. <\/p>\n

\u201cKids are the canaries in the coal mine,\u201d he said. \u201c When kids\u2019 health changes, it\u2019s because they\u2019re at increased vulnerability, and it reflects what\u2019s happening in society at large.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing of the study, he said, is \u201ccompletely fortuitous.\u201d Well before the 2024 presidential election, Forrest was working on a book about thriving over the life span and couldn\u2019t find this sort of comprehensive data on children\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

The datasets analyzed have some limitations and may not be applicable to the full U.S. population, noted Dr. James Perrin, a pediatrician and spokesman for the American Academy of Pediatrics, who wasn\u2019t involved in the study. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe basic finding is true,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The editorial published alongside the study said while the administration\u2019s MAHA movement is bringing welcome attention to chronic diseases, \u201cit is pursuing other policies that will work against the interests of children.\u201d Those include eliminating injury prevention and maternal health programs<\/a>, canceling investments in a campaign addressing sudden infant death and \u201cfueling vaccine hesitancy among parents that may lead to a resurgence of deadly vaccine-preventable diseases<\/a>,\u201d authors wrote.<\/p>\n

Officials from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s health.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to step back and take some lessons from the ecological sustainability community and say: Let\u2019s look at the ecosystem that kids are growing up in. And let\u2019s start on a kind of neighborhood-by-neighborhood, city-by-city basis, examining it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The health of U.S. children has deteriorated over the past 17 years, with kids today more likely to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":46522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[245,36150,36151,57,210,36152,3740,9337,1060,10943,1311,15010,2086,61,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-46521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-children","9":"tag-christopher-forrest","10":"tag-frederick-rivara","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-james-perrin","14":"tag-medical-research","15":"tag-medical-technology","16":"tag-medication","17":"tag-obesity","18":"tag-philadelphia","19":"tag-robert-f-kennedy-jr","20":"tag-seattle","21":"tag-u-s-news","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114813154591944844","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}