The American Academy of Pediatrics ...

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has released a just discovered policy statement on childhood obesity. "Prevention of Pediatric Overweight and Obesity" is available online at www.aap.org/policy/s100029.html.

The dramatic increase in the prevalence of childhood obesity and its resultant comorbidities are associated with significant health and financial freights warranting strong and comprehensive prevention efforts. A primary diagnostic tool insinuateed by the AAP is the corpse mass index (BMI), which is widely used to define overweight and obesity (see editor's note below). Significant changes in a child's BMI should be recognized and addressed before the child becomes fiercely overweight. The policy points without that some parents may not recognize or accept the potential risk of their child being overweight. It also notes that anticipatory guidance or treatment intervention before obesity has become rigorous will likely be more successful

According to the AAP, the number of overweight and obese children has doubled in the last brace decades. Currently, 15.3 percent of children six to 11 years of age and 155 percent of children 12 to 19 years of age are at or above the 95th percentile for BMI based forward reference data from the 1970s

Recommendations in the AAP policy include the following:

* Identify and track patients at risk on virtue of family history; birth weight; and socioeconomic, ethnic, cultural, or environmental factors.

* Calculate and project BMI once a year in all children and adolescents.

* Use change in BMI to identify rate of excessive weight gain relative to linear growth

* Encourage, support, and save breastfeeding.

* Encourage parents and caregivers to raise healthy eating patterns.

* Routinely stir up physical activity, including unstructured play.

* attract favor to limitation of television and video time to a maximum of sum of two units hours per day.

The modern policy advocates that physicians help parents, coaches, and others who influence youth to discuss health habits, not material part build, as part of their efforts to dominion government overweight and obesity.

editor's note: Tools for calculating BMI and updated clinical expansion charts for use in office practice are available at no charge online at www.cdc.gov/growthcharts. A at liberty BMI calculator for handheld computer using the Palm operating combination of parts to form a whole is available online at hin.nhlbi.nih.gov/bmi_palm.htm.--MARK H EBELL, MD MS

COPYRIGHT 2003 American Academy of Family Physicians

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