The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has created an online training course for health care providers and others who measure and assess growth of infants and young children. The course is using the World Health Organization (WHO) Growth Charts to Assess Growth with Children less than 2 Years of Age in the U.S. The recommendation for children less than 2 years of age is based in part on the recognition that breastfeeding is the recommended standard for infant feeding. In the WHO charts, the growth of the healthy breastfed infant is intended to be the standard against which the growth of all other infants is compared. This online training takes 45 minutes to complete; there are self-assessment questions in each section.
The World Health Organization released a new international growth standard for infants and young children ages birth to 5 years of age. The standard shows how infants and children should grow. The CDC now recommends that health care providers use:
- The WHO growth standard charts for children aged birth to less than two years regardless of type of feeding, to monitor growth in the U.S.
- The CDC growth reference charts for children aged two to twenty years to monitor growth in the U.S.
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