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Overweight and Obesity [message #12074]

Sun, 26 March 2017 11:42

austinU
Messages: 4
Registered: May 2015

Member

I am intending to analyze data on risk factors of macrosomia (birthweight of above 4000g) in Malawi and whether macrosomic babies have an increased risk of being overweight and obese. However, am not clear on how to categorize underweight, optimal weight, overweight and obese use BMI (Hw73). Would you please help me with SAS codes on how I could classify overweight and obesity in children under the age of 5?

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Re: Overweight and Obesity [message #12092 is a reply to message #12074]

Tue, 28 March 2017 14:04

Trevor-DHS
Messages: 805
Registered: January 2013

Senior Member

We do not have SAS code for this, but you can recode the variables fairly simply. Note that you have to select the files that you wish to analyze and there are two options: the PR file which is usually used for analysis of the anthropometric data in DHS reports, or the KR file which is restricted to children of women interviewed, and thus excludes orphans and foster children, but includes other characteristics collected during the interview wit the mother.

Stunting: HC70 (in the PR file) or HW70 (in the KR file) < -200 (this means less than -2 SD from the mean)
Wasting: HC71/HW71 < -200
Underweight: HC72/HW72 < -200
Overweight (based on weight for height) HC71/HW71 > 200 and HC71/HW71 < 9000
Overweight (based on weight for age) HC72/HW72 > 200 and HC72/HW72 < 9000

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Re: Overweight and Obesity [message #13582 is a reply to message #12092]

Wed, 22 November 2017 17:36

coreyo
Messages: 2
Registered: November 2017

Member

Trevor-DHS, thank you for this reply. In the 2016 Nepal DHS reports, is the rate of overweight based on weight for height or weight for age? This is not clear in the report or any of the documentation I can find.

Trevor-DHS wrote on Tue, 28 March 2017 14:04

We do not have SAS code for this, but you can recode the variables fairly simply. Note that you have to select the files that you wish to analyze and there are two options: the PR file which is usually used for analysis of the anthropometric data in DHS reports, or the KR file which is restricted to children of women interviewed, and thus excludes orphans and foster children, but includes other characteristics collected during the interview wit the mother.

Stunting: HC70 (in the PR file) or HW70 (in the KR file) < -200 (this means less than -2 SD from the mean)
Wasting: HC71/HW71 < -200
Underweight: HC72/HW72 < -200
Overweight (based on weight for height) HC71/HW71 > 200 and HC71/HW71 < 9000
Overweight (based on weight for age) HC72/HW72 > 200 and HC72/HW72 < 9000

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Re: Overweight and Obesity [message #13583 is a reply to message #12074]

Wed, 22 November 2017 18:31

Trevor-DHS
Messages: 805
Registered: January 2013

Senior Member

I am surprised that you say this is not clear. If you look at key findings for Chapter 11 at the beginning of the chapter on page 223, you will see that it states that "1% are overweight (heavy for their height)", and in the definition box on page 224 that overweight is defined as "Children whose weight-for-height Z-score is more than 2 standard deviations (+2 SD) above the median of the reference population are considered overweight."

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Re: Overweight and Obesity [message #13584 is a reply to message #13583]

Wed, 22 November 2017 19:20

coreyo
Messages: 2
Registered: November 2017

Member

My confusion is replaced with embarrassment. I had somehow missed that information, and then I was confused by the reference to weight for age in your forum reply. Thank you for the clarification.

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