# Dynamics and Health Consequences of Obesity between Infancy and Young Adulthood in the United States

> **NIH NIH R01** · EMORY UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $70,200

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
RELEVANCE: About 1/3 of adults and 1/5 of children and adolescents in the U.S. are obese, with socially
disadvantaged individuals being disproportionately affected. Rapid, excessive weight gain in early life often
translates into persistent obesity, which may be in turn be associated with earlier onset of several health
complications. Differences in obesity timing thus may be a vital way in which race-ethnic, socioeconomic and
regional disparities in health widen over the life course. OBJECTIVES: Our study will measure the dynamics
of weight status during childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood and link these dynamics with subsequent
health outcomes. A key contribution of our study is the careful and judicious use of statistical techniques to
combine existing high-quality national longitudinal cohorts into a synthetic cohort of over 90,0000, followed
from birth to age 55, reflective of recent experiences. AIMS: 1) Estimate the overall and sub-population
dynamics of obesity, including the age and timing of obesity onset, age-specific incidence, obesity duration and
intensity, weight fluctuations, and cumulative exposure to unhealthy weight. 2) Calculate the sub-population
cumulative exposure to high BMI during childhood, adolescence and young adulthood for contemporary U.S.
cohorts. 3) Estimate individual associations between exposure to high BMI across the first decades of life and
adult health, specifically diabetes, cardiovascular, metabolic, and gastrointestinal diseases and quality of life, to
quantify the health effects of early-life obesity dynamics. 4) Estimate the contribution of disparities in obesity
dynamics early in life to disparities in other health outcomes across race-ethnic, SES, and urbanicity groups. 5)
Develop a simulation to model the effects of interventions to reduce childhood obesity on national burdens of
adult disease and disparities in disease. DESIGN: We will integrate 7 datasets into a single nationally-
representative synthetic cohort. We will use recently-tested approaches to model multiple dimensions of
weight dynamics. We will estimate the average number of years spent obese, as well as a continuous measure of
BMI-years. We will link an individual’s obesity history with health complications using additive, duration, peak
BMI, and weight change models. We will evaluate obesity dynamics separately in underserved race-ethnic,
SES, and rural populations and will use decomposition approaches to quantify the contributions of these
dynamic to disparities in health conditions. We will develop a “macro-simulation” that allows us to assess the
impact of reductions in obesity incidence at key points in childhood and adolescence on the national prevalence
of obesity in adulthood, health complications in adulthood, and race, ethnic, socioeconomic and urbanicity
disparities in obesity and other chronic conditions. SIGNIFICANCE: The creation of a synthetic national
cohort addresses the critical absence of nat...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10216394
- **Project number:** 3R01DK115937-03S2
- **Recipient organization:** EMORY UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Solveig Argeseanu Cunningham
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $70,200
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2018-03-15 → 2022-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10216394

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10216394, Dynamics and Health Consequences of Obesity between Infancy and Young Adulthood in the United States (3R01DK115937-03S2). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10216394. Licensed CC0.

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