Toss the scale: BMI focus causes harm, new study shows
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The body mass index (BMI) metric has caused "historical harm," including "racist exclusion," according to a new report by the American Medical Association (AMA) Council on Science and Public Health.
Driving the news: Some Seattle-area providers are looking beyond weight and trying new approaches to get a read on people's medical needs.
- "BMI is the simplest measure, beyond weight, to try to make an assessment of whether a specific individual’s weight is potentially posing some harm to them," Scott Hagan, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said in a statement.
- But it does a poor job of predicting health outcomes for individuals, he said.
Why it matters: Doctors have long relied on BMI — weight divided by the square of height — to measure obesity, but it is an imperfect measurement that does not directly assess body fat, the nation's largest medical association said this week.
- Cutoffs for BMI, which range from underweight to obese, were created based on data collected from non-Hispanic white populations and do not take into account gender, ethnicity and age, reports Axios' April Rubin.
How it works: UW Medicine professor Lisa Erlanger is training future medical providers to toss the scale and throw away weight loss recommendations, KUOW reported.
- An exclusive emphasis on weight has often led providers to miss or misdiagnose a patient's true health problems, Erlanger told the public radio station.
- KUOW also reports that current evidence shows that dieting can hurt patients’ long term cardiovascular health and sometimes exacerbate eating disorders.
What's next: Erlanger's weight stigma seminar for health professionals asks students to think differently about patients' needs. A family with a larger bodied child who's getting bullied may need other kinds of help in supporting the child besides weight recommendations.