According to the latest estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one third of kids and adolescents in the US are overweight or obese. And now, researchers looking at total lifetime medical costs have estimated that, per head, childhood obesity costs $19,000 more than lifetime costs for normal weight children.

The researchers, led by Eric Andrew Finkelstein, PhD, MHA, from the Duke Global Health Institute and Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore, publish their results in the journal Pediatrics.

“Reducing childhood obesity is a public health priority that has substantial health and economic benefits,” says Finkelstein. “These estimates provide the financial consequences of inaction and the potential medical savings from obesity prevention efforts that successfully reduce or delay obesity onset.”

One of his co-authors, Dr. Rahul Malhotra, says that, in order to address the public health issue of obesity, reducing obesity among children is key as “most obese children and teenagers remain obese into adulthood.”

Alarmingly, when the team multiplied the $19,000 price tag by the number of obese 10 year olds in the US, the researchers found lifetime costs for that age group alone reached roughly $14 billion.

But of course, it is not only about the price tag. Obesity is linked to a number of diseases, from cardiovascular disease to type 2 diabetes and some cancers, making it a major health problem for the population.

“Public health interventions should be prioritized on their ability to improve health at a reasonable cost,” says Finkelstein. “In order to understand the cost implications of obesity prevention efforts, it is necessary to accurately quantify the burden of childhood obesity if left untreated.”