Introduction

Height, weight and other anthropometric measurements in children require some further analysis in order to find useful meaning to them. For example, is a child tall for his or her age? Is their weight too much or too little for their height? We use growth charts to estimate and calculate growth percentiles in order to make these interpretations at an individual or population level. Luckily, software is available that can help us to conduct these assessments when we have large data sets from research or surveillance systems.

Objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to...

  • Identify the growth reference data sets for evaluating child anthropometric data CDC, WHO
  • Calculate individual child BMI with anthropometric data
  • Manually plot child anthropometric measurements (height/stature, weight, BMI) to determine percentiles on growth charts
  • Calculate and interpret individual child growth measures with reference data sets using Epi Info software
  • Build an Epi Info data set using sample child demographic and anthropometric data
  • Demonstrate the ability to calculate and interpret group child growth measures with reference data sets using Epi Info software