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January 2, 2008
A New Year's resolution worth keepingNow that many of us are back on diets and hitting the gym more frequently, BoardBuzz would like to refocus on how schools can contribute to preventing – or reducing – the epidemic of childhood obesity. Some school districts are collecting students’ Body Mass Index (BMI) scores, but there has been little evidence that this is a useful strategy for schools to undertake.
In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a long-awaited report in the Journal of School Health that offers school officials recommendations based on science and experience for how best to use BMI. The bottom line is that there is no clear consensus on the value of BMI measurements. A key point made in the report, however, is to differentiate between BMI data used for surveillance and data collected to screen individual students for being overweight.
Check out the report in the Updates and Announcements section of the School Health Programs website. And if you want to ask questions of one of the authors, CDC’s Allison Nihiser, drop by her session at the NSBA Annual Conference in Orlando on Monday, March 31, from 2:00-3:15 p.m. in the Orange County Convention Center. For more information on the conference and how you can register, click here.
Posted January 2, 2008 3:44 PM | Health & Wellness
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