It can be hard being an overweight kid. But according to a new report, those struggles are being shared by more and more young Pennsylvanians every year.

In a report released Tuesday the Trust for America’s Health and The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation found that nearly one-in-three Pennsylvania youths are now either overweight or obese.

Seven states — including Alabama, Florida and West Virginia — have rates higher than 36 percent. Only one state (Utah) has a rate under 20 percent, the groups reported. Pennsylvania’s rate was 31.7 percent, placing it 21st out of the 50 states.

That’s basically middle-of-the-pack, but the trend — the percentage of overweight and obese youth in Pennsylvania rose from 2011 through 2016, according to the foundation — isn’t positive.

Concerns over obesity aren’t anchored in body image or fat-shaming. Being overweight or obese creates serious health risks, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancer and depression. In particular obesity and diabetes are two of the major drivers of increased health care costs in America.

And while most of the ailments listed above most often affect adults, not children, the link between childhood obesity and adult obesity-related health issues is compelling. Two studies published in 2016 by researchers in Denmark tracked more than 500,000 children for years and found that overweight and obese children saw an increased risk as adults for things like colon cancer and clot-related strokes.

And yes, children who are overweight or obese are most often facing these risks once they reach adulthood. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says that a child who is obese between the ages of 10 and 13 has an 80 percent chance of becoming an obese adult.

We haven’t even yet touched on how many lives are ultimately destroyed each year by excess weight and the medical complications created by it. A 2005 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, when the country’s national rate of obesity was much lower, estimated that obesity was responsible for 100,000 deaths in a single year.

The foundation’s report does contain a kernel of hope: the belief that obesity rates among young people may be peaking or leveling off — mostly driven by changes in federal nutrition programs, more focus on breastfeeding among new mothers, and exercise and food recommendations filtering down to school districts and day care centers.

But simply waiting for a public health crisis to “peak” isn’t good enough. Not when it is costing billions of dollars in health care costs and either killing people or dramatically reducing the quality and length of their lives.

As with many other things, the earlier we start the better — and that means getting children the exercise and healthy food that will help the grow and develop good eating habits and healthy lifestyles.

That’s a tall order for school districts, which struggled mightily under Michelle Obama’s healthy foods initiative and have had to cut back on things like recess and physical education classes because of budget squeezes and concerns about students’ academic achievement.

Public policy and government services have a role to play in solving this problem. They can — and should — help make it easier for people to make healthy choices. But ultimately the onus, especially when it comes to childhood and youth obesity, is on parents.