The CDC defines obesity as a Body Mass Index (BMI) at or above the 85th percentile and below the 95th percentile . A report written by Bell et al., indicates that approximately 12.5 million children between the ages of 3 to 12 have been affected by childhood obesity. According to the state of obesity, the percentage of obese African American children between the ages of 10 to 17 in 2016 was 37.7% and the percentage of obese Caucasian children was 28.9% in Georgia (“The State of Obesity” , 2004). In this project the goal is to determine why obesity is more prevalent in African American high school students than in Caucasian high school students in Georgia during 2005-2016. We hypothesize that if the socioeconomic status is low and there is a lack of physical activity then this will result in high obesity rates in African American children. We will be examining previous studies to do a percentage comparison. Examining study time series and BMI indexes to see how does the obesity rate change over time. Research findings indicate that obesity in African American high school students is attributed to many factors including: lack of physical activity, food availability, labor participation rate, availability of supermarkets, and school environment.
