Stratifying cardiometabolic risk in urban Chinese children with obesity: Study protocol of the Shenzhen Children Cohort Study (SCCS)

This study follows overweight and obese children aged 5-11 years over five years to document changes in physical measurements, biochemical indicators, imaging results, and questionnaire data on household structure, parental health history, and child routines. The aim is to build a multi-domain risk profile that moves beyond body mass index and simple metabolic categories. Prior studies often grouped children by BMI percentile or defined metabolically healthy and unhealthy types based on a few biomarkers. These methods overlook transitions, internal variation, and context. By applying repeated measurements and multiple modeling approaches, this study aim to identify subgroups based on shared risk trajectories, biomarker shifts, and family conditions. Risk is not treated as a single threshold but as a process shaped by exposures and responses. Although this cohort is located in one district, its structure may guide future work on pediatric risk classification under precision medicine frameworks.