Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 population-representative studies with 222 million children, adolescents and adults

NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) Code and Data Sharing

This repository contains code and data for generating estimates of prevalence of underweight/thinness and obesity in school-aged children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 years, and adults aged 20+ years, in 200 countries and territories from 1990 to 2022, as reported in the publication "Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 population-representative studies with 222 million children, adolescents and adults" [1].

Contents Guide

• data/  The list of data sources used in the study, together with input data used in the model from publicly available sources and contact information for other data sources.
• model/  R code for the Bayesian hierarchical model used to analyse the data to estimate underweight/thinness and obesity prevalence by country, year, and age, separately for children and adolescents and for adults. See methods section and Appendix Text 3 of publication [1] for details of the statistical methods. These codes were tested in R version 4.2.0, and package versions are given in the renv.lock file; see https://rstudio.github.io/renv/articles/renv.html for details on how to load these.
• figures/   R code to produce figures as appeared in publication [1].
• utils/   Essential covariate files.

Contact

• For more information about the paper or the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, please see www.ncdrisc.org or contact ncdrisc@imperial.ac.uk.
• Codes for producing publication figures are provided for transparency and in the spirit of scientific collaboration. We will not be able to answer questions about the details of these codes.

Other Materials

• Most users will prefer to access and use the complete NCD-RisC estimates of prevalence of underweight/thinness and obesity for children and adolescents and for adults, which are available here: www.ncdrisc.org/data-downloads.html.

Acknowledgements

• The shape file of the maps was based on Natural Earth [2].
• Population data used in this analysis were obtained from the 2019 revision to the United Nations' World Population Prospects [3].
• Data on percent national population living in urbanisation areas were obtained from the 2018 revision to the United Nations' World Urbanization Prospects [4].

References

1. NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 population-representative studies with 222 million children, adolescents and adults. Lancet 2024; 403:1027-1050.

2. https://www.naturalearthdata.com/

3. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/423)

4. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2018). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision, Online Edition