Obesity linked to financial hardship, food insecurity

Obesity is associated with financial hardship and food insecurity, according to a research letter published online June 24 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Simar S. Bajaj, from the Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues examined contemporary patterns of financial burden by obesity and overweight status in a repeated cross-sectional study using publicly available data from the National Health Interview Survey 2019 to 2023.

The final sample included 143,271 adults with normal weight (18.5 kg/m² ≤ body mass index [BMI] < 25 kg/m²), overweight (25 kg/m² ≤ BMI < 30 kg/m²), or obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m²). The researchers found that compared with those with overweight and normal weight, people with obesity were more likely to report financial hardship (14.2 versus 9.2 and 8.2%) and food insecurity (9.5 versus 6.0 and 5.6%). Obesity was associated with financial hardship and food insecurity in the first Poisson regression model. Financial hardship was 0.89 percentage points higher among people with overweight versus those with normal weight in the second model, which also adjusted for socioeconomic variables. Compared with those with normal weight, among people with obesity, financial hardship was 3.96 percentage points higher and food insecurity was 1.74 percentage points higher. Compared with those with overweight and normal weight, people with obesity reported greater cost-related medication nonadherence (9.2 versus 6.4 and 6.1%).

“In unadjusted and multivariable analyses, obesity was independently associated with difficulty paying medical bills, food insecurity, and skipping medication because of cost,” the authors write.

One author disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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