The advantages of living in cities for children and adolescents’ healthy growth and development are shrinking across much of the world, according to a new global analysis of trends in child and adolescent height and body mass index (BMI) led by Imperial College London and published in Nature. The research, by a global consortium of more than 1500 researchers and physicians, including Majid Ezzati, research lead at Imperial's Jameel Institute, analysed the height and weight data from 71 million children and adolescents (aged 5 to 19 years) across urban and rural areas of 200 countries from 1990 to 2020.
