Most adults in the U.S. will be overweight or obese by 2030, with related health care spending projected to be as much as $956.9 billion, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Their results are published in the July 2008 online issue of Obesity.

“National survey data show that the prevalence of overweight and obese adults in the U.S. has increased steadily over the past three decades,” said Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Human Nutrition. “If these trends continue, more than 86 percent of adults will be overweight or obese by 2030 with approximately 96 percent of non-Hispanic black women and 91 percent of Mexican-American men affected. This would result in 1 of every 6 health care dollars spent in total direct health care costs paying for overweight and obesity-related costs.”

The researchers conducted projection analyses based on data collected over the past three decades from nationally representative surveys. Their projections illustrate the potential burden of the U.S. obesity epidemic if current trends continue.

“Our analysis also shows that over time heavy Americans become heavier,” says May A. Beydoun, a former postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“The health care costs attributable to obesity and overweight are expected to more than double every decade. This would account for 15 to 17 percent of total health care costs spent,” Wang says. “Due to the assumptions we made and the limitations of the available data, these figures are likely an underestimation of the true financial impact.”

Current standards define adults with a body mass index (BMI) between 25 and 29.9 as overweight and adults with a BMI of 30 or higher as obese. Both the overweight and obese are at an increased risk for developing a number of health conditions, including hypertension, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Researchers estimate that children and young adults may have a shorter life expectancy than their parents if the obesity epidemic is left unaddressed.

Long Term Healthcare: Race DOES Matter

Blacks in the U.S. are more likely to receive lower-quality nursing home care than whites, according to a study published in the September/October issue of the journal Health Affairs, CQ HealthBeat reports.

he study — led by Vincent Mor, chair of the Department of Community Health at Brown University, and funded by the Commonwealth Fund — examined data from 2000 on 7,196 nursing homes that have more than 800,000 residents in 147 metropolitan areas nationwide.

According to the study, Milwaukee, Wis., had the largest disparity in quality of care for blacks and whites in nursing homes, and 10 of the 20 facilities with the largest disparities were located in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The study found that the disparity in quality of care for blacks and whites in nursing homes related to racial segregation. Nursing homes in Cleveland were the most segregated, followed by Gary, Ind.; Milwaukee; Detroit; Indianapolis; Chicago; St. Louis; Harrisburg, Pa.; Toledo, Ohio; and Cincinnati (Carey, CQ HealthBeat, 9/11).

The study also found that blacks were nearly three times as likely as whites to live in nursing homes with a large proportion of Medicaid beneficiaries, and such facilities are more likely to have limited staff, which can lead to lower quality of care. In addition, blacks were almost twice as likely as whites to live in nursing homes that lost their ability to participate in Medicare and Medicaid because of low quality of care, the study found. Blacks also were almost 1.5 times as likely as whites to live in nursing homes cited for violation that could result in immediate injuries to residents, according to the study (Fackelmann, USA Today, 9/11).