Children’s weight assessment – if it is everybody’s job then why does no one do it?

Current lack of clarity with regard to who is responsible for children’s weight monitoring in Australia results in failure to assess children’s weight regularly as well as inability to identify and intervene early in childhood overweight and obesity. While opportunities to monitor children’s weight exist in a number of settings , including schools, general practice or community clinics, research has mostly focused on general practitioners (GPs) who regularly fail to undertake this health check. Although barriers to GPs assessing children’s weight have previously bee n explored , limited research has investigated the perspectives of health professionals in other settings who might be better positioned to monitor children’ s weight