GREAT BAY--Nearly three out of every four adults in St. Maarten are overweight and almost 44 percent are obese, according to figures attributed to the country’s 2023-2024 PAHO/WHO STEPS Survey, placing St. Maarten alongside Aruba in confronting extremely high levels of overweight and obesity.
The figures indicate that 73.6 percent of St. Maarten adults surveyed were overweight and nearly 44 percent were obese. The national survey involved 2,042 adults between the ages of 18 and 69 and was conducted between July 2023 and October 2024.
The numbers have surfaced in connection with the doctoral research of St. Maarten-born researcher Dr. Franshelis Garcia, who recently earned her PhD from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands after studying stigma surrounding obesity and metabolic and bariatric surgery.
The figures are significant not only because of what they reveal about the health of St. Maarten’s adult population, but also because the Government has yet to publicly release the completed STEPS report.
In November 2025, the Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labor announced that St. Maarten’s first National PAHO/WHO STEPS Survey had been completed and that the final report had been officially submitted to then Minister of VSA Richinel Brug.
Government said at the time that the survey represented the country’s first nationally representative assessment of behavioral and biological risk factors associated with noncommunicable diseases. It also announced that a stakeholder information session would be held later that month to present the findings and recommendations.
Almost a year later, however, the complete has not been made available publicly. This makes the appearance of the specific 73.6 percent overweight and nearly 44 percent obesity figures particularly noteworthy. It is possible that Garcia obtained access to specific St. Maarten data through academic, professional or research channels while completing her doctoral work.
However, there is presently no public confirmation that she was given access to the final STEPS report or that the figures formed part of the data used in her thesis. What can be established is that the figures are consistent with a much wider obesity problem across the Dutch Caribbean.
Aruba provides the strongest direct comparison because it conducted its own PAHO/WHO STEPS Survey in 2023 using the same standardized international methodology and the same general 18-to-69 age range. Aruba’s published results found that 78.8 percent of adults were overweight and 45.8 percent were obese. The average body mass index among adults surveyed was 30.1, which falls within the obesity range.
That puts Aruba only about five percentage points above St. Maarten on overweight prevalence, while the obesity figures are strikingly similar: 45.8 percent in Aruba compared with nearly 44 percent in St. Maarten. PAHO described Aruba’s findings as showing that more than seven in every 10 residents were overweight or obese. Aruba subsequently used its STEPS findings to guide prevention initiatives and publicly released the survey results.
Other Dutch Caribbean islands also show high levels of excess weight, although the available data are not necessarily based on the same STEPS methodology or collected during the same period and therefore should not be treated as exact comparisons.
PAHO reports that Curaçao had an overweight and obesity prevalence of approximately 64.9 percent in 2017. Older health data from the Caribbean Netherlands also showed that around six in 10 residents of Bonaire were overweight in 2013, while similarly high levels were reported in St. Eustatius and Saba.
The emerging St. Maarten numbers therefore do not appear to be an isolated phenomenon. They fit a wider pattern across the Dutch Caribbean in which overweight and obesity affect large portions of the adult population.
But St. Maarten’s figures represent a deterioration from the limited local data previously available.
A 2015 health survey found that approximately 29 percent of adults on the Dutch side were obese and another 38 percent were considered pre-obese. While differences in methodology mean the two surveys should not automatically be treated as a direct trend line, the latest STEPS findings indicate that excess weight remains an enormous public health challenge.
Important note: “Overweight” generally refers to adults with a Body Mass Index, BMI, of 25.0 to 29.9, while a BMI of 30 or higher is classified as obesity. One important caveat is that BMI is a screening measure, not a direct measurement of body fat, and it does not account perfectly for differences in muscle mass, body composition or fat distribution.
