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Comment & Response
December 2015

Demographic Prevalence of Class III Obesity—Reply

Author Affiliations
  • 1Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri
  • 2Department of Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri
JAMA Intern Med. 2015;175(12):2001-2002. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.6556

In Reply Gearon and Backholer raise an interesting observation in the original analysis of our article,1 which was the prevalence of class III obesity (body mass index [calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared] ≥40) among non-Hispanic black women had increased the fastest among all obesity subclasses and race/ethnicity groups from 1988 to 1994 and 2007 to 2012 in the United States. Thus, Gearon and Backholer proposed to complement population-based obesity prevention approaches with prioritizing interventions targeting severely obese non-Hispanic black women to eliminate the racial disparity in obesity.

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