Identifying Overweight and Obese Children: Which Assessment Tool Is Most Accurate?

Selecting appropriate assessment measures that identify children at risk for overweight and obesity can be challenging. Practitioners and clinicians have used various anthropometric measures for decades, but evidence on which measure is most accurate needs to be elucidated. Data on the use of body mass index alone are inconclusive. Evidence on other simple and practical measures including waist and neck circumferences and waist-to-height ratio is gaining recognition and has been shown to have advantages over body mass index for identifying overweight and obese risk in children. Practitioners may need to use a combination of measures to obtain desirable outcomes.