Primary health care professionals’ perspectives on assessing children’s weigh status: a case study of Rockhampton

Treatment and management of overweight and obesity starts with identification of a weight problem . This has been recognised in the National Health and Medical Research Council “Clinical Practice Guidelines for Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults, Adolescents and Children in Australia (“Obesity Guidelines”) [ 1 ] . According to the “Obesity Guidelines” [ 1 ] routine assessment of children’s weight, height and Body Mass Index (BMI) - for - age is recommended to be undertaken by health professionals, who operate at the primary health care (PHC) level, as a part of “standard care” for growth monitoring purposes . However, in Australia, there is no mandated program for routine assessment of physical growth in childhood and it is unclear who is responsible for its undertaking . While a number of health professionals are recognised as potential users of the Guidelines, previous research regarding children’s weight status assessment and management of childhood overweight and obesity has generally focused on general practitioners (GPs) [ 2 - 4 ] . Furthermore, despite the Guidelines recognising that these can be used in a variety of PHC settings (Figure 1 [ 5 ]) research efforts mostly focused on General Practice leaving other PHC settings largely unexplored . This indicates the need to explore perspectives of other health professionals who interact with children in different PHC settings with regard to routine assessment of children’s weight status as the first step in addressing childhood obesit