Socioeconomic Inequalities in Overweight and Obesity in Serbia: Data from 2013 National Health Survey

摘要

Socioeconomic inequalities in overweight and obesity—impact on health overweight and obesity and their impact on health Overweight and obesity represent the significant public health problem (Averett et al., 2008 ; Sánchez et al., 2017 ). Prevalence of the obesity in the world in 2014 reached 11% of men and 15% of women (NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, 2016 ), and it is assessed that 38% of the world adult population will be overweight up to 2030, and 20% will be obese (Hruby and Hu, 2015 ) In the USA more than of a third of the adult population is obese (35%), but more than of a two-thirds of population is overweight (69%) (NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, 2016 ). By the evaluation of the obesity prevalence in European countries, showing variations from one country to another, the higher prevalence of obesity in the Central, Eastern and South Europe was noticed. The prevalence of obesity in most cases was less in European countries than in the United States of America (Bergh?fer et al., 2008 ; Flegal et al., 2010 ). In our country the increase of the obese persons is also recorded, the figure from the research of the Serbian population health in 2013 showed the presence of obesity in 21.9% of persons older than 20 years (Ministry of Health of the Republic of Serbia, 2014 ).Overweight and obesity were correlated with the occurrence of numerous chronic diseases, contributing to an increase in total morbidity and mortality, as well as to the serious economic pressure of a family and the increase in costs within a society worldwide (Mc Donald et al., 2015 ; Wang et al., 2016 ). Obesity represents a risk factor for the occurrence of numerous chronic non-contagious diseases, such as cardiovascular, diabetes mellitus of type 2, carcinomas; it results in the increase in the mortality rate all over the world (National Institutes of Health, 1998 ; Whitlock et al., 2009 ; World Health Organization, 2009 ; Stankovi? and Ja?ovi?-Ga?i, 2010 ; Wormser et al., 2011 ).Numerous factors contribute to the occurence of the obesity such as the following: the old age, gender, nationality, socio-economic level, marital status (El Rhazi et al., 2010 ; Pampel et al., 2012 ). Socio-economic differences are obvious in nutrition, giving thus an explanation for the presence of social inequalities in health (Alkerwi et al., 2012 ). People with the high social-economic status have a higher probability for the healthier habits in nutrition in relation to the people with the worse socio-economic status, who are not able to follow complete nutritive recommendations and guidelines in nutrition, resulting in their worse health state (James et al., 1997 ). Therefore, the main concern of the public health should be both social inequality and diet quality in order to acquire the healthy dietary behaviors (Alkerwi et al., 2015 ).In Serbia, like in many other countries in transition, the existing socio-economic inequalities in health have not been studied enough and have not received full attention in the policy of the public health. Undeveloped countries from the Balkans have to face numerous health challenges as well. The leading causes of morbidity and mortality, absenteeism, disability, and premature death are chronic non-communicable diseases (mainly cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes) that are mostly preventable if adequate measures are implemented (Jakovljevic and Varjacic, 2017 ). Health status of the population was mostly affected by population aging and negative socio-economic developments during the last decade (Jakovljevi?, 2017 ). All countries of the Western Balkans region are facing growing difficulties in the provision of sustainable health care financing and equitable access to medical care for their citizens (Jakovljevic, 2013 ). Transitional reform processes of national health systems across Eastern European and Balkan societies have been present for almost two and half decades (Jakovljevic et al., 2017 ). Despite enormous invested efforts and resources many of the key features of past, such as heavy hospital-based system of medical service provision and presence of large state controlled health insurance funds have remained present in most of these countries (Jakovljevic et al., 2011 ; Jakovljevic and Souliotis, 2016 ). The data report methods Public data set description—Serbian 2013 national health survey Data used are from the Third National Survey conducted by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Serbia in 2013. The survey was conducted in accordance with a type of the cross-sectional study on the territory of the Republic of Serbia and it did not include the population living on the territory of the Autonomous Region of Kosovo and Metohija. In the third research, a methodology applied was the methodology and instruments of the European Health Research—the second wave (EHIS-wave 2) (Eurostat, 2013 ).From 10,089 households in total, 6,500 of them gave their consent for the particip