Obesity Profile: December 2020 update
Obesity Profile online data tool: update with new data from the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) for academic year 2019 to 2020.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
The Obesity Profile (previously named NCMP and Child Obesity Profile) displays data from the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) showing the prevalence of obesity, severe obesity, overweight, healthy weight and underweight at local authority (LA), regional and national level over time; for children in Reception (aged 4 to 5 years) and Year 6 (aged 10 to 11 years).
Users can compare LA data by region or between ‘The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) nearest neighbours’ (LAs with similar characteristics).
The tool also presents inequalities in child obesity prevalence by sex, deprivation quintile and ethnic group by local authority. The profile also includes child obesity slope index of inequality (SII) for each of the 9 English regions and England.
School closures, in March 2020, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic meant that in 2019 to 2020 the number of children measured was around 75% of previous years. Analysis by NHS Digital shows that national and regional level data is reliable and comparable to previous years. The data at local authority level and below is not as robust, as a result a small number of areas do not have published data for 2019 to 2020 and data for some areas have a reliability flag indicating that figures need to be interpreted with caution. Further information is available in the Obesity Profile and in the NHS Digital 2019 to 2020 annual report .
The NCMP small area data domain displays trend data on the prevalence of excess weight (overweight including obesity) and obesity for Middle Super Output Areas (MSOAs), Electoral Wards, and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) with comparator data for local authorities and England.
To produce as robust an indicator as possible at small area level, the prevalence estimates use three years of NCMP data combined; the latest data is presented for 2017 to 2018 up to 2019 to 2020 combined. In the three-year grouped NCMP data for small areas we would expect around 33% of data from each contributing year. Values for areas where less than 20% of data is from 2019 to 2020 is flagged in the Obesity Profile. The percentage contribution of 2019 to 2020 data to the three-year data for each geographic area is available on the NHS Digital website. The obesity, and excess weight prevalence indicators at small area level for 2017 to 2018 up to 2019 to 2020 are still considered to be reliable even with a small amount of data from 2019 to 2020.
A new domain (Adult prevalence data) has been added to this profile to display indicators on adult excess weight and obesity in early pregnancy. More indicators for other adult BMI categories will be added in 2021.