An examination of the relationships between service use and alternative measures of obesity among community-dwelling adults in Ireland

Edel Doherty, Michelle Queally and Ciaran O’Neill ()

The European Journal of Health Economics, 2015, vol. 16, issue 9, 956 pages

Abstract: Obesity has received increased attention arising from its increasing prevalence and the implications of obesity-related problems for society and the wider economy. To estimate healthcare and non-healthcare obesity impacts, many studies rely on body mass index (BMI) as a measure of obesity. However BMI is considered to be a noisy measure of total body fat that unlike some other measures does not capture fat distribution. This study uses one such measure, the waist-to-hip ratio, as both an alternative and in conjunction with BMI in the estimation of the relationship between adiposity and health service use. The article uses data from a large-scale study of older adults living in Ireland (the Tilda data set). The findings indicate that studies that include both measures of general and central adiposity may provide a more comprehensive characterisation of the relationship between healthcare service use and adiposity. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Keywords: Adiposity; BMI; Waist to hip; Health service use; C31; I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10198-014-0643-z

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