Short Communication Does routine surveillance of children’s height and weight provide a sufficiently reliable means for monitoring the obesity epidemic? R.S. Levine a, *, A.-M. Connor b , R.G. Feltbower a , M. Robinson a,b , M.C.J. Rudolf a,b a Academic Unit of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Leeds, Belmont House, 3/5 Belmont Grove, Leeds LS2 9DE, UK b North West House, West Park Ring Road, Leeds LS16 6QG, UK Received 7 May 2007; received in revised form 16 October 2007; accepted 6 November 2007 Available online 3 March 2008 For many years in the UK, the School Nursing Service has collected routine growth measure- ments for children at school entry. However, there is evidence that these data are often inaccurate, reported incompletely or entered erroneously. 1,2 This paper reports a comparison of data collected by the local school nursing service and by specially trained teams on a class-by-class basis on the same cohort of schoolchildren. The latter was collected in the context of the TRENDS project; an exercise supported by the Department of Health’s Priority and Needs Fund- ing. 3 Its purpose was to develop a school-based monitoring scheme that would provide simplicity, reproducibility and cost-effectiveness to monitor trends in childhood obesity in the City of Leeds, but also suitable for national implementation throughout the UK. In 2004 and 2005, when the TRENDS project was still considered experimental, routine surveillance by the School Nursing Service of Leeds children in reception year was ongoing. This provided the opportunity to compare the two methods of collection for their effectiveness in measuring children. The TRENDS 2004 study measured the children (aged 5e6 years) in the reception classes in 10 primary schools, with a further 25 schools included the following year. Teams of two healthcare assistants were trained by an auxology nurse in accurate measurements, and measured the chil- dren as described previously. 3 For the purposes of comparison, measurements taken through routine surveillance of reception year children (age 4e5 years) by the School Health Service were obtained from the East Leeds Primary Care Trust. As is usual practice, children were measured on an individual basis by the school nurse as part of their school entry medical proce- dure. The child’s name, date of birth, postcode and the name of the school were used to match in- dividual children’s routine surveillance data with data from the TRENDS studies. The key differences between TRENDS and the routine surveillance *Corresponding author. Tel.: þ44 (0) 113 392 6352; fax: þ44 (0) 113 392 5169. E-mail address: ronnielevine@onetel.com (R.S. Levine). 0033-3506/$ - see front matter ª 2007 The Royal Institute of Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.puhe.2007.11.001 Public Health (2008) 122, 1117e1119 www.elsevierhealth.com/journals/pubh