Socioeconomic Status And Body Mass Index Of Elementary School Students In Atlanta And Metro-atlanta

According to the 2022-2023 National Survey of Children's Health, in Georgia, 21% of children 6-11 years old are obese (95th percentile or above). Many studies show that children from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods have an increased likelihood of overweight/obesity. PURPOSE: To determine the correlation between neighborhood socioeconomic (SES) status and average body mass index (BMI) of elementary school students in Atlanta, GA and metropolitan -Atlanta. METHODS: This secondary data analysis included 182 elementary schools (45 from the Atlanta Public School System, 57 from the Fulton County school system and 80 from the Gwinnett County school system). Fulton County and Gwinnett County are counties of metropolitan -Atlanta. The address of each school was sourced through a Google search. SES indicators percentage of households below poverty (HBP) and the percentage of households with children below poverty (HBPc) were obtained by zip code from the United States Census Bureau. Schools and SES variables were matched based on zip code. School average body mass index (BMI) was abstracted by gender from the publicly available 2016-2017 Georgia FitnessGram Report. Spearmen correlations were used to assess the relationship between FitnessGram variables and SES variables. Each analysis was stratified by gender. RESULTS: For girls, school average BMI was positively and moderately correlated with HBP (ρ = 0.54, p < .0001), and HBPc (ρ = 0.53, p < .0001). For boys, there were weak correlations between school average BMI and HBP (ρ = 0.33, p < .0001), and HBPc (ρ = 0.32, p < .0001). CONCLUSIONS: A higher percentage of households below the poverty line was correlated with elevated average school BMI. Consistent with other studies, the relationship between school BMI and neighborhood SES was stronger for girls than for boys. This study underscores the significant impact of neighborhood SES on BMI among elementary school students and features differences by gender. These results lay the foundation for a larger study to examine the association between neighborhood SES and weight status in Georgia children.