April 11, 2024 — Two decades ago, the state of Arkansas became the first in the nation to require every school to send parents BMI report cards – also known as fat letters. Back then, in 2003, the obesity rate for children in Arkansas was 17%. Since then, obesity in Arkansas public school students has risen dramatically. In the […]
September 23, 2023 — We have a relationship problem with BMI – the body mass index. As with any rocky relationship, we can’t seem to live with it and we can’t seem to live without it either. Professor Robert Kushner described the the good, the bad, and the ugly of BMI better than ever in an opening session of […]
March 27, 2021 — In the new issue of Childhood Obesity, Sarah Armstrong and Ted Kyle tell us the time has come to stop screening for obesity in school. The reason is simple. This screening harms children, but offers them no benefit. Telling a child or the child’s parent they are fat doesn’t help. It does nothing for their […]
July 9, 2017 — Wonder blob. Lindsay Averill received that nickname from middle school frenemies. They even made up a little song about it. Averill, now a women’s studies scholar and activist, has grown to be a closer friend with the woman who made up that song. And new research tells us that her experience is pretty common. Having […]
September 14, 2016 — A new study in Pediatrics raises a critical question. Do the current guidelines for routine childhood BMI screening and counseling help more than they hurt? Leslie Sim and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of BMI screening and counseling in pediatric primary care. Their analysis of ten randomized controlled trials and two quasi-experiments found little effect on BMI […]
