Pediatricians Weigh Children But Need Resources to Adequately Address Childhood Obesity Epidemic
While almost all pediatricians report weighing and measuring children at well child visits, many are still not using recently recommended BMI percentile measurements. Many feel they do not have time to address overweight issues well, and that counseling patient and families is not very effective. The results of an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) 2006 survey of pediatricians will be presented Sunday, May 6th, at the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Toronto.
“The epidemic of childhood obesity requires clinical, community, policy and educational strategies. Pediatricians can assess overweight in children pretty well, but once they do that, most report that they need more effective tools to be able to address it,” said Jonathan Klein, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of Adolescent Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center and author of the study. “In order to help these children, we need more nutrition and physical activity referral sources and better reimbursement for effective weight management.”
About half of the pediatricians who responded to the survey of 1,600 AAP members said they assess Body Mass Index (BMI) for their patients over 2 years of age, and most think parents want to talk about their children being overweight. Most of the pediatricians say they discuss physical activity and eating fruits and vegetables, but sugar-sweetened beverages, snacks, fast food and the food pyramid are less likely to be topics of conversation. Among pediatricians:
Article continues below and (thank you) |
