Case study: Introducing new measurements in addition to the National Child Measurement Programme that estimate body fat to support the development of guidance to reduce ethnic inequalities in health NIHR CLAHRC YH Theme: Healthy Children, Healthy Families

March 2016

Contact: [email protected] Background: There is increasing evidence that for a given BMI South Asian children have greater total and central adiposity than White British children and are potentially more metabolically sensitive to body fat. These differences are not identified by BMI alone. The Healthy Children Healthy Families (HCHF) theme is working in partnership with school nurses in Bradford to improve our understanding of the risk of being overweight and obese in South Asian children. School nurses have been trained to take additional measures of triceps and subscapular skin fold thickness in addition to routine measurements for the National Child Measurement Programme. Initial findings suggest that despite having a lower BMI, Pakistani children have slightly higher subscapular skinfold thickness suggesting greater relative central adiposity. This is an important finding which may help us develop more appropriate guidelines for child growth and reduce health inequalities for ethnic minority groups Seven school nurses were trained to to take research quality measures of adiposity. Nurses have visited 141 schools and 6992 children for the study. As a result of the study we have raised the local authority and school nurses awareness of ethnic differences in childhood adiposity. We have contributed to a review of the future role of school nurses, encouraging the addition of skinfold measurements to supplement the National Child Measurement Programme in Bradford to enable the on-going exploration of the relationship between adiposity and health outcomes in different ethnic groups. Furthermore, we have provided training and supported the professional development of school nurses in their capacity as public health practitioners.

Next steps: The HCHF theme plan to continue working with the Public Health Department within the local authority to implement findings from the study (once complete) into policy and guidance and training for school nurses and other public health professionals. We aim to work with the LARK network to disseminate these findings in order to influence wider adoption and spread of this approach to measure adiposity in South Asian children, where appropriate across Y&H.

www.clahrc-yh.nihr.ac.uk

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How CLAHRC supports this project: Members of the HCHF theme of CLAHRC have been involved in stakeholder meetings regarding the role of school nurses and have written directly to the Public Health Department at Bradford District Metropolitan Council to support the continuation of this important work and underline the importance of skinfold measures in further service planning to address the needs of high risk, ethnic minority populations.

Provided for i.e NIHR Annual Progress Report March 2016 The NIHR CLAHRC Yorkshire and Humber is a partnership between 31 organisations including NHS, Higher Education, Local Authorities, Charities, Industry and the Regional Innovation Hub. A full list is available on our website www.clahrcyh.nihr.ac.uk

www.clahrc-yh.nihr.ac.uk

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