Obesity Offsets Antismoking Efforts

All those public health gains from getting people to stop smoking are being undermined by the rise of obesity.

While smoking rates dropped 20 percent in the past 15 years, the rate of obesity jumped 48 percent, according to Susan T. Stewart, a Harvard University research associate and lead author of a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study, which also included University of Michigan researchers, found if every adult American became a nonsmoker of normal weight by 2020, life expectancy would increase by almost four years.

Stewart predicted almost half of the U.S. population will be obese by 2020. Her estimate is close to one made by Emory University health care economist Ken Thorpe last month. Thorpe predicted health care costs related to obesity will surge to $344 billion, or four times the amount spent now, by 2018.

Big business groups, such as the National Business Group on Health, say obesity is one of the most serious issues contributing to high health care costs among employers. More than a quarter of annual medical premiums are related to obesity, the business group says.

The advice? Public health initiatives to discourage smoking work, and similar efforts should be made to curb obesity, the researchers say.