Excess Weight in Adults

What this data shows:

Obesity is a priority area for Government. The Government's "Call to Action" on obesity (published Oct 2011) included national ambitions relating to excess weight in adults, which is recognised as a major determinant of premature mortality and avoidable ill health. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/healthy-lives-healthy-people-a-call-to-action-on-obesity-in-england.

How the data is gathered:

Percentage of adults classified as overweight or obese. Adults are defined as overweight (including obese) if their body mass index (BMI) is greater than or equal to 25kg/m2.

The colour coding for this indicator uses a red, blue and green colour key to indicate how the individual values in local authorities compare. Comparisons are with local authorities of similar socioeconomic status. Upper tier local authorities are allocated to ten groups according to their index of multiple deprivation, allowing their indicator values to be compared with 14 others that have similar socioeconomic status. Green denotes values that are statistically significantly better than the average for the deprivation group and red denotes values that are statistically significantly worse

More information about the data source:

It is known that adults tend to underestimate their weight and overestimate their height when providing self-reported measurements and the amount to which this occurs can differ between population groups. Therefore prevalence of excess weight (overweight including obese) calculated from self-reported data is likely to produce lower estimates than prevalence calculated from measured data. To assess the accuracy of the self-reported height and weight, the data from the Active People Survey (APS) were compared with measured height and weight data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) 2006-2010. Similar analysis was performed using the 2011 HSE data where both self-report and measured height and weight were collected from the same individuals. These analyses found that the differences between self-reported and measured height and weight vary in a systematic way, primarily as a function of age and sex. This systematic variation can be described by formulas, which have been used to adjust self-reported height and weight measurements at an individual level from the APS to estimate the likely actual height and weight of those individuals. The self-reported height and weight values for individuals have been multiplied by the appropriate adjustment factor for that age and sex to obtain an estimate of the true height and weight of that individual. Whilst these will not be precise at an individual level, at a population level they act to bring the APS data much more closely into line with the actual measures, such as those described by the HSE. The accuracy of self-reported height and weight may change over time. Therefore work is ongoing to ensure an appropriate adjustment factor to ensure the data continue to provide a robust estimate of the prevalence of excess weight at local authority level. The counts were weighted to be representative of the whole population at each level of geography.

Data Source:

Active People Survey, Sport England http://www.sportengland.org/research/.

Data Period:

2012

Further Information:

For further information please see Indicator 2.12 at www.phoutcomes.info.