Different Methods of Calculating Deaths Attributable to Obesity

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Different Methods of Calculating Deaths Attributable to Obesity

Introduction

Obesity has become one of the most significant health problems in the society nowadays. According to BBC (2004), more than 30,000 deaths per year were caused by obesity in England. Obesity related illness include coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and other various health problems. Because of its rising significance, a lot of effort was put into evaluating the economic cost of obesity. The National Audit Office (2002, as cited in BBC, 2004) quoted a cost of £500 million to the NHS per year, with the overall cost to the country reaching £7.4 billion a year. Such evaluation not only encouraged the government to initiate strategies to reduce the burden of obesity to the society, but also raised the awareness of the public to this rising health problem. Soon, the public began to question the accuracy of such figure as it presented urgency for this long existed problem to be solved. In recent years, a number of scientific studies have attempted to derive methods to accurately calculate deaths caused by obesity. Among them were the papers by Allison et al. (1999a; 1999b) and Flegal et al. (2004a; 2004b; 2005). In