A bill in the Ohio legislature would require public school students to have body mass index measurements taken in kindergarten, third, fifth and ninth grades. The bill is being proposed is response to media reports concerning obesity, including a new study that estimates if obesity trends continue on their current path, more than 40 percent of adults in the United States will be obese by 2018. The study estimates that about $344 billion in annual medical-related expenses would go towards obesity by 2018, equaling about 21 percent of health-care spending.
The bill would require that the results of the Body Mass Index screening be placed on the school’s annual report card. Some Ohio administrators are concerned with how this information might be used. Will the media rank schools according to obesity numbers? Will they be grouped into "fat" and "thin" schools?
I applaud schools that are measuring Body Mass Index of students and using this information to help the student understand about how nutrition and exercise can affect body fat. Body Mass Index is relatively easy to calculate, but it can vary quite a bit depending on who is doing the measuring. Since the numbers may not be accurate, I question whether the schools’ numbers should be made public. And I am against legislature’s placing more unfunded mandates on the schools. It is possible that B-R will be measuring Body Mass Indexin the near future, but I would not appreciate the legislature making that decision for us.
