Investment case for the prevention and reduction of childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity in Mexico |
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Authors: | Mauro Brero Christina L Meyer Angela Jackson-Morris Garrison Spencer Elizabeth Ludwig-Borycz Daphne Wu Anabel Fiorella Espinosa De Candido Maria Isabel Ferre Eguiluz Anabelle Bonvecchio Arenas Jo Jewell Rachel Nugent |
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Institution: | 1. UNICEF Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico;2. Center for Global Noncommunicable Diseases, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA;3. Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA;4. Directora de Investigación en Políticas y Programas de Nutrición, Centro de Investigación en Nutrición y Salud, Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública, Cuernavaca, Mexico;5. UNICEF, New York, New York, USA |
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Abstract: | Despite efforts to curb the rise in Mexico's child and adolescent overweight and obesity rates, prevalence in Mexico has grown by 120% since 1990 to 43.3% in 2022. This investment case identifies policies that will produce the largest returns for Mexico. The investment case model builds beyond a cost-of-illness analysis by predicting the health and societal economic impact of implementing child and adolescent overweight and obesity interventions in a cohort aged 0–19 from 2025 to 2090. The Markov model's impacts include healthcare expenditures, years of life lost, and reduced wages and productivity. We projected and compared costs in a status quo scenario to an intervention scenario to estimate cost savings and calculate return-on-investment (ROI). Total lifetime health and economic costs amount to USD 1.8 trillion—USD 30 billion on average per year. Implementing five interventions can reduce lifetime costs by approximately 7%. Each intervention has a low cost per disability-adjusted life year averted over 30-year, 50-year, and lifetime horizons. The findings demonstrate that a package of interventions mitigating child and adolescent overweight and obesity offers a strong ROI. The novel investment case methods should be applied to other countries, particularly low- and middle-income countries. |
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Keywords: | adolescent childhood economics obesity |
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