Is the Usa’s Childhood Obesity Online Search Interest Impacted by Childhood Obesity Prevalence, Pediatric Type II Diabetes Mellitus Prevalence, or the Academic School Year?

Background: Over the past two decades, childhood obesity (CO) across the United States of America (USA) has increased from 15% to 19%, along with the prevalence of well-documented comorbidities like pediatric type-2 diabetes mellitus (PT2DM). Improving relevant patient and family online education aims to improve outcomes, especially for the 35% of patients that research their conditions on Google. Thus, the Google Trends (GT) database reflects the public’s medical search patterns by providing temporal popularity scores (0-100) for specific topics by normalizing search frequency with other searches in the same subject. Analysis of temporal trends and contemporary correlations between USA childhood obesity GT search interest and the prevalence of pediatric CO and PT2DM may provide insight into factors driving public interest and sufficient online self-education.

Methods: Analysis of 2004-21 USA GT scores of “Childhood Obesity” with filter “Health”, the USA’s annual 2011-2018 BMI-based cumulative proportion of pediatric obesity from the Center for Disease Control & Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, and the USA’s annual 2011-2018 cumulative number of PT2DM patients from the Global Health Data Exchange.

Results: Calculated Pearson’s correlation coefficients showed strong negative correlations of GT search popularity scores with 2011-2018 annual CO cumulative proportions & annual PT2DM cumulative patient numbers, respectively (Figure). From 2011-2018, increasing annual CO & PT2DM prevalence were positively correlated (R2=0.8527). One way ANOVA (α=0.05) of 2004-2021 GT search scores concluded that mean change in monthly scores were not the same (p= 3.87E-29), and that all months, except for March and August, have a statistically significant repeating pattern, also known as month-specific seasonality. Furthermore, months that traditionally fall within the USA academic school year (October-November; February-May) have repeatedly increased CO Google search frequency, while months within traditional USA vacation periods (December-January & June-September) have repeatedly decreased the frequency of CO Google searches.

Conclusion: The strong negative correlation of CO GT scores and CO prevalence reveals a unique lack of Google self-education for this health condition. Moreover, the concurrent, and strong negative correlation of CO GT scores and PT2DM prevalence suggests that patients, their families, and others are likely unaware of the well-supported connection between CO and PT2DM in the United States. The positive correlation between CO & PT2DM prevalence confirms the link between the two pediatric conditions. Seasonality analysis substantiating an increased public interest in CO during school months, and decreased CO interest in vacation months, suggests that patients, their families, and other individuals are far more likely to engage in online self-education during the academic school year. Given the aforementioned results, the analyzed data suggests that the ideal time to reach out and educate individuals regarding childhood obesity and its complications is during the academic school year.