Prevalence and trends of obesity and overweight in Palestine: a protocol for a systematic review

Abstract

Scientific summary: Obesity and overweight is a significant burden on public health and is socially patterned. It is considered to be among the top most important risk factor behind the development of disease worldwide. Worldwide, there are more than a billion obese people. It has been linked to many adverse consequences such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and some cancers which may also reduce the average life expectancy among those who are obese. Management of obesity is difficult, costly and unsuccessful in most cases. Many research articles over the past years have revealed increasing trends of obesity among both young & adults residing at the most socioeconomically disadvantaged nations like Palestine, other research results showed plateauing trends of obesity. The main objective of this systematic review is to determine the exact prevalence of obesity and overweight among children and adults in Palestine. Additional objectives will be to investigate whether using different measures, such as waist-to-hip ratio or waist circumference, might affect the prevalence rates.