ArticleCMAJ open2014
Influence of country of birth and ethnicity on body mass index among Canadian youth: a national survey.
Article in CMAJ open, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Minoritized and Poorly Understood: A Scoping Review of Mental and Physical Health Among Arab Adolescents in Canada and the United States.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Correlations between weight perception and overt risk-taking among Canadian adolescents.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2023Article
- Developmental Trajectory of Body Weight in Youths at Risk for Major Mood Disorders.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Connections associated with a healthy spirituality: are these unrecognized intermediary determinants that shape health inequities in Canadian young people?BMC public health · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe body mass index (BMI) of youth often changes when they immigrate to a new country as a result of the adoption of new behaviours, a process called acculturation. We investigated whether BMI differs by country of birth (Canada v. other countries) and ethnicity, both individually and together. We also examined whether time since immigration and health-related behaviour explain any observed BMI differences.
methodsData sources were the Canadian Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children study and the Canada Census of Population. Participants were youth in grades 6-10 (weighted sample n = 19 272). A questionnaire was used to assess participants' sociodemographic characteristics, height, weight and health-related behaviour. We calculated BMIs from participants' self-reported heights and weights and used World Health Organization growth references to determine BMI percentiles.
resultsBased on self-reported heights and weights, BMI percentiles for foreign-born youth were lower than those of youth born in Canada (-4, 95% confidence interval [CI] -6 to -2). This difference did not decrease with time since immigration. Similarly, BMI percentiles were lower among East and Southeast Asian youth than their peers from the Canadian host culture (-4, 95% CI -6 to -2). Finally, BMI percentiles for foreign-born Arab and West Asian youth and East Indian and South Asian youth were lower than their Canadian-born peers of the same ethnicity (-14, 95% CI -22 to -7; -8, 95% CI -14 to -3).
interpretationImmigrant generation and ethnicity were related to BMI among Canadian youth, both independently and together. Some ethnic groups showed differences by country of birth, i.e., East Indian and South Asian, while others showed no such difference, i.e., East and Southeast Asian. There was no association with time since immigration. Our findings reinforce the need to investigate country of birth and ethnicity when considering the determinants of childhood BMI.
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Registered trials
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