VIDEO: Use BMI as a screening tool, not a diagnostic tool
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DALLAS — In this Healio video exclusive, Fatima Cody Stanford, MD, MPH, MPA, MBA, FAAP, FACP, FAHA, FAMWA, FTOS, discusses cultural competency with regard to obesity care.
Cody Stanford, obesity medicine physician-scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of medicine and pediatric at Harvard Medical School, recaps her talk at ObesityWeek, titled #Blackness is Not a Risk Factor.
Cody Stanford highlights the flaws of BMI as it applies to people from different racial-ethnic backgrounds. BMI was originally developed by Adolphe Quetelet of Belgium in the 19th century. Quetelet used height and weight from white Belgian soldiers to develop BMI and applied it to the general population. Cody Stanford said BMI has since been extrapolated to use in diverse populations across the world, although it wasn’t initially created using a heterogenous group of adults.
“I don’t think we should use BMI as a diagnostic tool,” Cody Stanford told Healio. “I do believe that we should use it as a screening tool for the population.”
Cody Stanford said providers need to go beyond BMI and examine factors such as waist circumference, cholesterol and family history to determine a person’s risk for cardiometabolic disorders.
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