Direct medical costs of childhood obesity during 2015–2024: A systematic review

Background

Child obesity is a serious public health concern and is known to cause a significant burden on health care costs across the world. This systematic review aimed to determine the cost of care for child obesity during 2015–2024.

Method

MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus and Cochrane CENTRAL were searched on November 15, 2024 to identify original articles conducted in children and adolescents (aged 0–20 years) which reported the costs of care of children with obesity and without obesity. The outcome measures included relative and direct costs of care attributed to child obesity.

Results

In total, 745 studies that reported obesity were identified, of which eight studies were included in the qualitative synthesis. The included studies had either used the real-world data collected from different data sources (database studies, n = 5) or epidemiological and economic sources (modeling studies, n = 3) to estimate medical care expenditure. The relative costs of care were 35 % higher and direct of care were between 0.4 % and 88 % higher in children with obesity than normal weight children. In absolute terms, the excess costs (USD, 2024) for treating overweight and children with obesity ranged from $32.44 to $1225.35. The annual per capita health care costs (USD) differed across countries, which was attributed to methodological differences in cost estimation and durations of the studies.

Conclusion

Childhood obesity incurs country specific higher direct costs of care.