CDC Growth Charts PowerPoint Presentation

(Speaker notes and slide text are located at bottom of page.)

Slide 20 of 47

Speaker Notes

The tracking of BMI that occurs from childhood to adulthood is clearly shown in data from a study by Robert Whitaker (Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati) and colleagues. They examined the probability of obesity in young adults in relation to the presence or absence of overweight at various times during childhood. For example, in children 10 to 15 years old, 10% of those with BMI-for-age < 85th percentile were obese at age 25 whereas 75% of those with a BMI-for-age > 85th percentile were obese as adults and 80% of those with a BMI-for-age > 95th percentile were obese at age 25. (The sample size for the study was 854.) This study clearly shows that an overweight child is more likely than a child of normal weight to be obese as an adult.

Other studies have shown this same trend of tracking occurring from childhood to adulthood.

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Slide Text

Tracking BMI-for-Age from Birth to 18 Years with Percent of Overweight Children who Are Obese at Age 25¹

Image: A bar graph is displayed.  This graph illustrates the probability of obesity in young adults in relation to the presence or absence of overweight at various times during childhood described in the speaker notes using the following tabular data.

Whitaker et al. NEJM: 1997;337:869-873

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This page last updated April 11, 2005

United States Department of Health and Human Services
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity