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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Karen E Peterson, ScD, RD1, Jean L. Wiecha, PhD2, Juhee Kim, MS3, Judy Salkeld, MS4, Elizabeth Walker, MS2, and Ramya Sundararaman, MD, MPH5. (1) Departments of Maternal and Child Health and of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, III-617, Boston, MA 02115, 617 432-1080, kpeterso@hsph.harvard.edu, (2) Department of Health and Social Behavior, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Prevention Research Center, 677 Huntington Avenue 7th floor, Boston, MA 02115, (3) Institute for Community Health, 119 Windsor Street, Ground Level, Cambridge, MA 02139, (4) Department of Maternal and Child Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue 6th floor, Boston, MA 02115, (5) Injury Prevention, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Massachusetts Department of Public HEalth, 250 Washington Street, 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02108
Rapid increases in childhood overweight underscore the importance of timely data to support needs assessment and evaluation of programs and policies to alter these trends. Periodic national surveys estimate overweight prevalence in school-age youth, but more frequent data on heights and weights aggregated at the local level are generally unavailable. To address this gap in the surveillance data-action cycle, we developed a pilot system with two aims: 1) to test the feasibility of school-based monitoring; and 2) to estimate baseline prevalence of overweight in a sample of Boston school children. A coalition comprised of school health administrators, public health researchers, and representative state and local agencies, health insurers and advocacy groups was formed for the purpose of informing protocol design and facilitating the data collection process. The sample consisted of a census of all fourth-grade students with passive parental consent enrolled in 38 parochial schools in metropolitan Boston. Between November 2000 and May 2001, complete data on weight, height, age and sex were obtained on 832 students by public health nurses trained according to CDC data quality guidelines. Using 2000 NCHS/CDC reference BMI percentiles, 170 students (20.4%) were overweight (BMI >95th percentile) and 197 (23.6%) were classified as at risk for overweight (BMI 85-95th percentile). Twelve students (1.4%) had BMIs < 5th percentile. Findings are compatible with national trends in overweight and risk of overweight in children and youth, and suggest school-based height and weight surveillance is a feasible and reliable strategy to generate local estimates.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Surveillance, Youth
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: N/A
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.