Measuring the Weight Status, Primary Care Usage and Dietary Intake in the Pediatric Emergency Department

Study Summary

Childhood obesity is a major area of concern for health care and public health. Overweight children are more likely overweight and obese adults. Chronic health problems associated with adult obesity are now occurring more frequently in children. Because of the associated health problems and potential for long term struggles with obesity, intervention early in life is essential for addressing the obesity epidemic. Some intervention work in this area has focused on the pediatric primary care setting in order to utilize the influence and credibility of medical providers. Unfortunately, primary care visits are often too short to spend a significant amount of time on issues of diet, weight and nutrition. There has been very little work exploring the potential of alternative care settings, such as the pediatric Emergency Department (ED) in addressing childhood obesity. While provider time is also limited in the ED, there is often a considerable amount of downtime during emergency department visits that could be valuable time for patient and parent education. There may also be an opportunity to reach parents and children in the ED who do not regularly utilize primary care. In order to explore the possibility of pediatric obesity interventions in Children's Pediatric Emergency Department, we will need to measure the prevalence of obesity in the population that utilizes the Children's ED. The height of patients seen in the ED is not routinely measured, which makes calculating BMI to determine obesity impossible. This study, establishing the prevalence of obesity in Children's Emergency Department will lay the groundwork for future work addressing obesity in the ED.