Feasibility of a screening tool for obesity diagnosis in Mexican children from a vulnerable community of Me'Phaa ethnicity in the State of Guerrero, Mexico

Mexico ranks first in the world in childhood obesity, and second in obesity in adults. Although there are several health promotion programs, some vulnerable communities are still in a high risk for increasing the prevalence of childhood overweight and obesity. The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility to develop an automatic screening tool for obesity diagnosis in a vulnerable community in the State of Guerrero, in Mexico, using anthropometric variables and a machine learning approach. Results show that presented classifiers exhibit a high capacity to assess either a child is overweight, or not, yielding a high confidence tool for obesity screening.