How should doctors manage overweight kids?
KEN RESNICOW ANSWERS: “Thirty to 40 percent of American kids are overweight. Pediatricians keep telling us they don’t know what to do—they don’t believe what’s out there works. So we’re attempting to give them some new counseling skills. Through the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, we’ve put together a series of guidelines on pediatric obesity prevention and treatment, and we’re testing those guidelines in a randomized trial of 36 pediatric practices throughout the country. The guidelines are available on the AMA and AAP websites, and we’ve also produced a three-disk DVD on the use of motivational interviewing for pediatric obesity. “A key aspect of our guidelines is to calculate body-mass index, or BMI, for all patients on a yearly basis, beginning at age two. BMI is an objective physiologic measure that’s unbiased—unlike diet and activity. Next, we encourage physicians to work with parents to identify behavioral targets for the family. Typically th
