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Obesity in the News, 2019–2026: Attention, Geography and Tone of Global Obesity Coverage, and How It Compares with Research and Invention

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We measure how obesity was covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 51,207 de-duplicated obesity news articles, and set that coverage beside 136,334 research papers (2015–2025) and 4,615 patent families (2015–2024) on obesity. Six results stand out: Rising attention. Obesity's share of news rose 1.61-fold between 2019 and 2025, from 2.74 to 4.42 articles per 10,000. The largest annual step came from 2022 to 2023 (34.7%). The peak month was November 2025, at 5.95 per 10,000. A drug story. Between January 2023 and July 2026, drug pricing and reimbursement was the most common theme (12.97% of themed articles), and Novo Nordisk was named in 10.53% of all obesity articles. Geography. Denmark (11.6) and Sweden (4.04) are the most over-represented countries. The United States holds 54.61% of located articles at a lift of 1.13. India is under-represented (0.77) but its attention rose 2.25-fold from 2023 to 2025. Within the United States, Massachusetts (3.64) leads; within India, Telangana (2.12). Tone and urgency. 63.3% of obesity articles are positive in tone (all news: 56.8%), and 74.1% are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%). In the United Kingdom, obesity news is 16.8 points more negative than UK news overall. Measurement. 56.1% of raw matches for obesity vocabulary were removed by exclusion patterns for research-journal abstracts, market-research notices and other non-news items. Counting them would more than double "coverage". Research and invention. Obesity papers grew from 16.88 to 21.28 per 10,000 papers between 2015 and 2025. Patent families with obesity in the title were flat (487 in 2015, 495 in 2024), and the offices of China and South Korea held 50.2% of office filings.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23446822
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222877025
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