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Measuring childhood obesity: Guidance to primary care trusts

Obesity is one of the biggest public health issues facing England. The Government has responded to this issue by developing a public service agreement (PSA) target to 'halt the year on year rise in obesity among children aged under 11 by 2010'. This guidance provides advice to primary care trusts (PCTs) on how to measure the height and weight of children aged between 4 and 11 years.

Important note: Guidance for the National Child Measurement Programme will be published in mid April 2007. This new guidance will supersede the 2005-06 guidance on measuring childhood obesity. The guidance has been substantially revised in light of feedback from the first year of the programme.

We strongly urge PCTs to wait for the publication of the new guidance, especially before writing to parents, as the specimen letters to parents and others have all been revised.

We are aware that several PCTs have already conducted this year's measurement and will, of necessity, have used last academic year's guidance. We would like to reassure these PCTs that the data collected in this way can still be submitted to the National Child Measurement Database. A new data collection tool will be issued before mid-May 2007, into which PCTs can start to input pupil measurements. This tool can be used to upload information to the NHS Information Centre from July 2007.

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