The purpose of this column is to provide strategies for physical education (PE) teachers/coaches on how to obtain weight and BMI readings discretely from their students. Continuing to acquire weight and BMI readings where the students can see and know their own readings, and the readings of their peers can lead to serious unplanned concerns. These…

Poor physical health is common in people with Severe Mental Illness (SMI). Two-thirds of deaths in SMI could be avoided if patients are offered prompt physical health screening for known risk factors. We aimed to identify SMI patients registered at a General Practice and audit their care in relation to physical health monitoring. We included adult…

Growth, maturation, and development dominate the daily lives of children and adolescents for approximately the first 2 decades of life. Growth and maturation are biological processes, while development is largely a behavioral process. The 3 processes occur simultaneously and interact. They can be influenced by physical activity and also can…

The American College Health Association estimated that 31% of college students are overweight or obese. It is important that students have a correct perception of body weight status as extra weight has potential adverse health effects. This study assessed accuracy of perceived weight status versus medical classification among 102 college students.…

Aim: To examine the evidence of the effectiveness of different feeding interventions for children with cerebral palsy. Methods: A search of 12 electronic databases identified all relevant studies. For each study, the quality of the methods was assessed according to the study design. A total of 33 articles were retrieved, and 21 studies were…

In this paper we investigate how schoolmates influence high school dropout intentions in Catalonia, Spain. Our analysis uses self-reported friends to identify possible peers by assuming that peer influence flows in one direction in cases where one student identifies another as a friend, but the other does not reciprocate. We first estimate the…

Objective: This study investigates the relative contributions of global self-esteem, body mass index (BMI), dieting behaviors, and perceived parental control and care on body satisfaction among a nonclinical sample of college students. Participants and Methods: Participants (49 males and 299 females) reported weight and height (to calculate BMI)…

This study analyzed the increase in head circumference (HC) of 85 autistic infants (64 boys and 21 girls) during their first year of life. The data were collected from their "mother-and-baby" notebooks. This notebook is a medical record of the baby's growth and development delivered to the parents of all babies born in Japan. This is a…

Body mass index (BMI) is increasingly recognized as an inadequate measure for determining obesity in children. Therefore, the aim within this study was to investigate other indirect methods of body fat assessment that could potentially be used in place of BMI. Twenty-four children (boys: 13.8 [plus or minus] 0.8 yr; girls: 13.3 [plus or minus] 0.5…

The article reviews existing literature on the effects of stimulant medications on the growth of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. It concludes that treatment with stimulants in childhood results in moderate growth deficit in height and weight.

We use rich data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey to assess the relationship between mothers' access to social capital via participation in community activities and their children's health. We exploit the advantages of longitudinal data and community fixed effects to mitigate some of the concerns about spuriousness and reverse causality that…

The Institute of Medicine recommends school-based body mass index (BMI) screening as an obesity prevention strategy. While school nurses have provided height/weight screening for years, little has been published describing measurement reliability or process. This study evaluated the reliability of height/weight measures collected by school nurses…

This study explored the weight management practices, rates overweight and obesity, perceptions of body weight, and weight management goals in a large sample (N = 467) of Hispanic (n = 421) and Anglo (n = 46) female college students on the U.S.-Mexico border. Women self-reported their height and weight, weight perceptions, and weight management…

People with profound intellectual disabilities rarely experience a physically active lifestyle, and their long-term physical inactivity likely contributes to poor health. The authors developed and implemented a pilot exercise program for persons with a profound intellectual disability and conducted a study to evaluate the effort. The development…

National level data were analyzed to establish the nature of association and the magnitude of contribution of education exposure to variance on measures nutritional well-being across Africa. Height and weight dependent anthropometric measures were used to assess nutritional well-being. Literacy (illiteracy) rates were the measures of educational…