Measuring child growth through data

In order to understand the nutritional status of adults and children anthropometric data or body measurements, such as weight-for-age, length-for-age or weight-for-height are taken and compared to a large population. Accurate anthropometric data are critical to helping policy makers, programme managers and researchers understand issues such as stunting, malnutrition, and links between obesity and disease risk.

To support Member States collect and analyse anthropometric data for children under age 5, WHO provides access to several tools. The WHO Anthro Survey Analyser is an online tool that aims to promote best practices on data collection, analyses and reporting of anthropometric indicators. It offers analysis for 4 indicators: length/height-for-age, weight-for-age, weight-for-length, weight-for-height and body mass index-for-age.

Additionally, WHO’s Anthro Software consists of 3 modules: anthropometric calculator, individual assessment and nutritional survey. The first 2 modules concern the calculation of z-scores (or percentiles) for the assessment of individual child’s growth, and thus very pertinent for clinical application.

WHO uses anthropometric data in the Global Database for Child Health and Malnutrition and checks it for validity. Prevalence below and above defined cut-off points for 4 anthropometric indexes, namely weight-for-height, height-for-age, weight-for-age and body mass index (BMI)-for-age, in preschool children are presented using z-scores based on the WHO Standards Child Growth.

The WHO AnthroPlus is a software for the global application of the WHO Reference 2007 for 5-19 years to monitor the growth of school-age children and adolescents.

Undernutrition is associated with 45% of child deaths

Globally, 144 million children under 5 are stunted

Over 820 000 children could be saved yearly if all children 0-23 months were optimally breastfed.