A systematic literature review and subsequent meta-analysis were performed to investigate differences in childhood obesity between urban and rural areas in the United States.
A search of published studies comparing childhood obesity in urban and rural settings was undertaken by probing PubMed and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) for articles that met predetermined inclusion criteria. A subsequent meta-analysis was conducted to determine the combined effect size and significance of differences in childhood obesity between urban and rural areas.
Ten studies were identified for systematic review, five of which contributed to the meta-analysis. All but one study suggested that residence in rural areas was associated with higher prevalence or increased odds of childhood obesity, compared to children living in urban areas. A meta-analysis of 74,168 pooled participants ages 2-19 found that rural children have 26% greater odds of obesity, compared to urban children (odds ratio=1.26; 95% confidence interval, 1.21-1.32).
Obesity rates are higher among rural children than urban children in the United States. To ensure successful targeted interventions and effective resource allocation, practitioners and policy makers alike should be cognizant of this disparity in childhood obesity.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 18. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 October 2026.
All research outputs
#2,642,121
of 33,779,198 outputs
Outputs from Childhood Obesity
#99
of 865 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#27,308
of 304,348 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Childhood Obesity
#3
of 12 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,779,198 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 92nd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 865 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 11.0. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 304,348 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 12 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 75% of its contemporaries.
