Body Mass Index Quick Screening Tool for Indian Academy of Pediatrics 2015 Growth Charts.

OBJECTIVE

To develop gender-specific graphic tool in which BMI cut offs can be read from height and weight, without need for calculating BMI and to validate the tool against Indian Academy of Pediatrics (IAP) 2015 BMI charts.

METHODS

Validation of tool was performed using de-identified data on children from school health surveys.

RESULTS

For detection of overweight and obesity, the BMI tool had sensitivity of 95.7% and specificity of 85.7% for boys, and 95.7% and 89.7% for girls, respectively. For underweight, sensitivity of 100% for boys and girls, and specificity of 88.9% for boys and 82.4% for girls was observed.

CONCLUSION

We present a graphic BMI tool for screening for underweight, overweight and obesity, which complements the existing IAP charts.