Providing individualised care to high-risk women in the intrapartum period - an interpretive descriptive study.

Obesity results from excess adiposity or body fat percentage (BF%) and affects the function of organs and tissues. It is one of the most important risk factors attributed to non-communicable diseases, leading to premature mortality and morbidity [, ]. With the advent of mechanization, surplus availability of energy-dense food, and increasing prevalence of unhealthy behavioral risk factors like decreased physical activity, increasing sedentary behavior, and unhealthy dietary patterns, the rates of overweight and obesity have been escalating at the global and regional levels across populations worldwide []. An estimated 493 million and 2.11 billion individuals aged 5–24 years and ≥ 25 years worldwide were living with overweight and obesity in 2021, and the numbers are expected to reach 746 million and 3.80 billion by 2050 [, ]. These rising trends are expected to place substantial pressure on health systems and economies, particularly in low and middle-income settings. Given the limited and unequal access to obesity care in many settings, early identification and risk stratification remain central to prevention and management []. For a long time, prevention has relied upon measuring BF% to identify people living with overweight and obesity. While direct BF% estimation is tedious, it is also inaccessible to many []. Therefore, BF% is assessed using proxy methods, such as anthropometric parameters including body mass index (BMI), waist and hip circumference (HC, WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), and waist-height ratio (WHtR) []. However, the utility of these measures has long been debated because they do not adequately capture body fat distribution, excess adiposity-related dysfunction, or the clinical consequences of obesity at the individual level []. As a result, BMI-based definitions may not sufficiently distinguish those with excess adiposity alone from those with established obesity-related morbidity and functional compromise.