PERSPECTIVES

BMI

What use is the BMI?

D M B Hall¹, T J Cole²

¹ Institute of General Practice and Primary Care, ScHARR, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
² Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
D M B Hall
Storrs House Farm, Storrs Lane, Sheffield, S6 6GY, UK;d.hall@sheffield.ac.uk

Accepted 3 November 2005

---

The BMI is the best available tool for monitoring progress in the campaign against obesity

---

Abbreviations: BMI, body mass index; FFM, fat free mass; FFMI, fat-free mass index; FM, fat mass; FMI, fat mass index; IOTF, International Obesity Taskforce; VFM, visceral fat mass

Keywords: body mass index; children; obesity; overweight; screening

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The House of Commons Select Committee on obesity, and two expert groups in the USA, recommend that the body mass index (BMI) of every school child should be measured each year and the result sent home to the parents. The BMI correlates sufficiently well with direct measures of total body fat to support its use, on an anonymous basis, as a public health tool for monitoring progress in dealing with the obesity epidemic. However, the BMI is an imperfect proxy for obesity because there is much individual variability in the relationship between BMI and body fat, cardiovascular risk factors, and long term health outcomes. Whatever BMI cut offs are selected for determining the advice to parents, a high BMI calls for further evaluation and interpretation and the policy proposed by the Select Committee, to send BMI results to parents, is therefore in effect a screening programme. As such, it . . . [Full text of this article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Atoms

Howard Bauchner
Arch. Dis. Child. 2006 91: e283. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Guxens, M., Mendez, M. A., Julvez, J., Plana, E., Forns, J., Basagana, X., Torrent, M., Sunyer, J. (2009). Cognitive Function and Overweight in Preschool Children. Am J Epidemiol 170: 438-446 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Hawkins, S S, Cole, T J, Law, C, and the Millennium Cohort Study Child Health Group, (2009). An ecological systems approach to examining risk factors for early childhood overweight: findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 63: 147-155 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Shaw, N. J, Crabtree, N. J, Kibirige, M. S, Fordham, J. N (2007). Ethnic and gender differences in body fat in British schoolchildren as measured by DXA. Arch. Dis. Child. 92: 872-875 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
• Patterson, L., Jarvis, P., Verma, A., Harrison, R., Buchan, I. (2006). Measuring children and monitoring obesity: surveys of English Primary Care Trusts 2004-06. J Public Health (Oxf) 28: 330-336 [Abstract] [Full Text]