Perspectives
WHO Child Growth Standards in action
1 Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research TNO, Quality of Life, Leiden, The Netherlands
2 University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Correspondence to:
Professor Stef van Buuren, Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research TNO, Quality of Life, PO Box 2215, 2301 CE Leiden, The Netherlands; stef.vanbuuren@tno.nl
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In 1994 the World Health Organization (WHO) began planning for new growth standards. The main motivation came from the observation that clinically significant differences exist between the growth patterns of healthy breastfed infants and the NCHS/WHO international growth references. The WHO recognised that growth references are often used as standards, that is, as tools that enable assessment of how children ought to grow rather than describing how they grew at a particular time and place. A global standard emphasises the notion that all humans are equal. The key assumption underlying the work is that growth is driven by the environment, more particularly, "the biological reality that environmental differences rather than genetic endowments are the principal determinants of disparities in physical growth".1
The Multicentre Growth Reference Study (MGRS; 1997–2003) collected data on the growth of 8500 children aged 0–5 years from six sites with various ethnic backgrounds and cultural settings (Brazil,
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