The health of U.S. children has deteriorated over the past 17 years, with kids today more likely to have obesity, chronic diseases and mental health problems such as depression, a new study says.

Much of what researchers found was already known, but the study paints a comprehensive picture by examining various aspects of children’s physical and mental health at the same time.

“The surprising part of the study wasn’t with any single statistic; it was that there’s 170 indicators, eight data sources, all showing the same thing: a generalized decline in kids’ health,” said Dr. Christopher Forrest, one of the authors of the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has brought children’s health to the forefront of the national policy conversation, unveiling in May a much-anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” report that described kids as undernourished and overmedicated, and raised concerns about their lack of physical activity.

“The health of kids in America is not as good as it should be, not as good as the other countries, and the current policies of this administration are definitely going to make it worse,” said Dr. Frederick Rivara, a pediatrician and researcher at the Seattle Children’s Hospital and UW Medicine in Seattle. He co-authored an editorial accompanying the new study.

Forrest and his colleagues analyzed surveys, electronic health records from 10 pediatric health systems and international mortality statistics. Among their findings:

1. Obesity rates for U.S. children ages 2-19 rose from 17 percent in 2007-2008 to about 21 percent in 2021-2023.
2. A U.S. child in 2023 was 15 percent to 20 percent more likely than a U.S. child in 2011 to have a chronic condition such as anxiety, depression or sleep apnea, according to data reported by parents and doctors.
3. Annual prevalence rates for 97 chronic conditions recorded by doctors rose from about 40 percent in 2011 to about 46 percent in 2023.
4. Early onset of menstruation, trouble sleeping, limitations in activity, physical symptoms, depressive symptoms and loneliness also increased among American kids during the study period.
5. American children were around 1.8 times more likely to die than kids in other high-income countries from 2007-2022. Being born premature and sudden unexpected death were much higher among U.S. infants, and firearm-related incidents and motor vehicle crashes were much more common among 1- to 19-year-old American kids than among those the same age in other countries examined.

The research points to bigger problems with America’s health, said Forrest, who is a pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“Kids are the canaries in the coal mine,” he said. “ When kids’ health changes, it’s because they’re at increased vulnerability, and it reflects what’s happening in society at large.”

The timing of the study, he said, is “completely fortuitous.” Well before the 2024 presidential election, Forrest was working on a book about thriving over the life span and couldn’t find this sort of comprehensive data on children’s health.