The number of Americans living with obesity is expected to rise by 19 million and affect nearly 126 million people by 2035, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Wednesday.
Researchers found that the number of American adults living with obesity has more than doubled over the past 30 years, increasing from 34.7 million in 1990 to an estimated 107 million American adults in 2022. New findings suggest that this upward trend is expected to continue.
“Our projections indicate that almost half of US adults will be living with obesity by 2035,” Dr. Catherine O. Johnson, lead research scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and co-author of the study, told ABC News.
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In the study, researchers reviewed the body mass index of over 11 million Americans across all states. They then broke down the numbers by state, age, sex, and race.
The findings showed that women were more affected than men overall and that Southern states had a higher number of people living with obesity.
Adults ages 45 to 64 had the highest rates of obesity, while younger women under 35 experienced the fastest rise in numbers in recent years. The shift seen in women “means that this population will also likely experience younger onset of obesity-related health concerns, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” Johnson said.
Black women had the highest rates of obesity in 2022, the study found, followed by Hispanic women.
The disparities among different races and ethnicities point to how factors like income, access to healthcare, food availability and exercise opportunities may be driving them, experts say.
“Obesity is due to multifactorial set of causes including, but not limited to, access to healthy food, aspects of the built environment, and physical inactivity,” Johnson said.
STOCK PHOTO/Adobe – PHOTO: An overweight person measures their waist in an undated stock photo.
The findings of the research also highlight that obesity affects Americans nationwide and will continue to impact more families each year.
“Obesity is currently a major public health threat and that this is likely to continue,” Johnson said. “Public health strategies that deliver real results, as well as increased and equitable access to clinical interventions, are urgently needed to make a difference.”
Additionally, clinicians play an important role, Johnson noted, “both in treatment for persons currently living with obesity and in helping patients maintain a healthy weight early in life, starting in childhood.”
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However, the increasing trends in obesity may place further pressure on health care systems, given that obesity is linked to various poor health outcomes.
“Estimates are that health care costs associated with obesity were almost 200 billion dollars in 2019 [and] this is only expected to increase,” Johnson said.
The study did not primarily look at GLP-1 weight loss drugs, which have surged in popularity in recent years. Prior research has shown that the drug may have led to a slight downturn in obesity rates in 2024.
Camille Charles, DO, is a pediatric resident and member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
