topic Re: CDC source code for calculating BMI percentile and Z-score in Statistical Procedures

CDC source code for calculating BMI percentile and Z-score

Merdock — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 21:13:14 GMT

Hello! I was wondering if anybody has any experience using the cdc-source-code.sas program (available here: https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/growthcharts/resources/sas.htm) for calculating BMI percentiles and Z-scores? I have a dataset with weights, heights, gender, birth dates and examination dates for patients aged 2-18 years old and am trying to calculate gender-specific BMI-for-height-age percentile and Z-score.

So my main questions are:

1. can the cdc-source-code.sas be used to calculate gender-specific BMI-for-height-age percentiles/Z-scores? If yes, how?

2. Is the gender-specific BMI-for-height-age the same as gender-specific BMI-for-age? My impression is that they're not the same and in that case, I don't think the cdc program can be used (at least not without any modifications) to calculate the gender-specific BMI-for-height-age percentiles/Z-scores but then again, I don't have much experience with this so I could be very wrong.

Re: CDC source code for calculating BMI percentile and Z-score

JosvanderVelden — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 08:57:38 GMT

Does this paper help? https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings11/235-2011.pdf

Re: CDC source code for calculating BMI percentile and Z-score

Merdock — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 23:29:03 GMT

Thank you for the reference! Unfortunately, it does not provide any information regarding how to obtain sex-specific BMI for-height-age. I know how to calculate gender-specific BMI-for-age but I need gender-specific BMI-for-height-age as this has been proven to be a more accurate measure of adiposity and weight gain for the pediatric population with kidney disease. However, all the online calculators, articles, references, macros I could find all use BMI-for-age, not BMI for-height-age so I don't really know where to find the information I need.

Re: CDC source code for calculating BMI percentile and Z-score

JosvanderVelden — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 09:45:55 GMT

I see your point. Maybe @gcjfernandez_gmail_com has some information to share.