US_BMI_Mortality_Trends

Body Mass Index (BMI) was ascertained for ~140,000 subjects by sex and race who participated in 17 cross-sectional and longitudinal studies spanning years 1959 to 2016, including the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), National Health Examination Study (NHEFS) and longitudinal NHANES-I Epidemiological Follow-up Study (NHEFS). Three-dimensional thin-plate splines were fit jointly to longitudinal and cross-sectional data and used to model BMI data by calendar year and age. Life tables from the National Center for Health Statistics and projected population and life tables from the Social Security Administration (SSA) were combined with previously published associations between BMI and mortality by age and sex from the Prospective Studies Collaboration to project all-cause mortality rates by BMI quintile.