National Child Measurement Programme: Detailed Analysis of the 2006/07 National Dataset

Abstract

The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) weighs and measures the height of children in Reception (typically aged 4–5 years) and Year 6 (aged 10–11 years). The findings are used to inform local planning and delivery of services for children and gather population-level surveillance data to allow analysis of trends in excess weight. The programme also seeks to raise awareness of the importance of healthy weight in children. The NCMP is part of the government's strategy to tackle the continuing rise in excess weight across the population. This report analyses the NCMP 2007/08 national dataset provided by the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care (NHS IC). The NHS IC collates and analyses NCMP data centrally after they have been collected at a local level and submitted by Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), with the support and cooperation of schools, children and parents. This report follows on from the report National Child Measurement Programme: 2007/08 school year, headline results (NHS IC 2007/08 NCMP report) published by the NHS IC in December 2008. It presents detailed secondary analysis to further our understanding of the epidemiology of child height, weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) across the country, and attempts to explain some of the findings presented in the NHS IC 2007/08 NCMP report. The National Obesity Observatory (NOO) will conduct further analyses following this report. The existence of different approaches to defining obesity means that the interpretation and comparison of prevalence data is more complex than it might initially appear. Health Survey for England (HSE) findings, in agreement with other data, show that over the last twenty years the proportion of the child population classified as overweight or obese has increased. In addition, HSE data also show an increase in mean BMI over the past decade for children. The NCMP dataset contains anonymised information on individual children who have been measured. This, combined with the size of the dataset, means the NCMP data provide a powerful tool to examine changes in child weight status. This can provide much more detail than simply the prevalence of overweight and obesity. This report presents analysis of PCT participation levels and investigates data quality issues in the collection of the 2007/08 NCMP dataset. Data on prevalence of underweight, healthy weight, overweight and obesity are analysed, comparing the 2007/08 data to 2006/07 and the 1990 baseline. Analyses by deprivation and ethnic group are also included. The report goes on to examine how the distribution of BMI differs by age and sex of the child sample population and investigates changes since the 1990 baseline. It also looks at the association between obesity prevalence and characteristics of both the individual children and the PCTs in which they were measured, using regression analysis.