Height and weight status of Indochinese refugee children. An anthropometric study of 1,650 children.

To provide guidelines for assessing growth status of Indochinese refugee children, height and weight measurements were obtained from 1,650 children residing in Lao refugee camps, Cambodian refugee camps, and surrounding Thai villages. These are compared with the few existing growth references for Asian children. In comparison to US growth standards (National Center for Health Statistics/Centers for Disease Control) for children, the mean weight for age and mean height for age of the studied groups are approximately 2 SDs below US means. Weight for height is 0.7 SD below US means. This marked difference in growth status appears to be due to nutritional factors related more to cultural or economic issues affecting these children than to their genetic background. The US growth standards can serve as reference tools in evaluating the growth status of newly arrived Southeast Asian children, if used with the perspective that Southeast Asian children, on a group basis, have different distributions on US growth curves.