Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Public health authorities need relevant information to address rising levels of obesity in Canada. While we know that obesity is increasing everywhere, the level of increase is different in different regions. This regional-level information is particularly important for authorities because they often decide on policies and programmes for relatively small jurisdictions. However, most studies do not consider region-level differences. In our study, we used statistical methods to project obesity levels for 16 health regions in Quebec, and analysed the differences between these regions. We found that by 2023, between 16% and 25% of the Quebec population will be obese. We also found that regions had highly variable rates of increase in obesity per year from 1987 to 2012. These different rates of increase explained the different percentage obese in each region in 2023. This finding is important for public health authorities because it suggests that monitoring the rate of increase may help decision makers more than monitoring the percent of obese residents in each year, as is usually done.