NCMP and Child Obesity Profile

NCMP Introduction

The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) measures the height and weight of over one-million children aged 4-5 and 10-11 years each year in primary schools in England. The NCMP is an excellent source of surveillance data which helps increase understanding of the patterns and trends in underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obesity among the child population.

NCMP data from 2006/07 to 2018/19 are now available in this online data tool. Prevalence of underweight, healthy weight, overweight, obesity and severe obesity for children in Reception (age 4-5 years) and Year 6 (age 10-11 years) can be examined at local authority level. Data quality indicators are also available in this tool, for example rate of participation in the NCMP.

Five years worth of data combined for obesity prevalence provides inequalities data for sex, deprivation and ethnic group by local authority. This data is available for the last two indicators in the drop down menu on the inequalities data tab:

• Prevalence of obesity among children in Reception, 5-years data combined
• Prevalence of obesity among children in Year 6, 5-years data combined

Data on child obesity and excess weight at small area level

To help understand some of the diversity within local authorities and examine pockets of high child obesity prevalence, Public Health England produces data by Middle Super Output Area (MSOA) and Ward for all of England. A new domain has been added to this profile to display trend data on the prevalence of excess weight (overweight including obesity) and obesity. Data from the NCMP is presented for MSOAs, Electoral Wards, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG), local authorities, and England.This data is available in the NCMP small area data domain:

• MSOA, Ward and CCG data for prevalence of obesity and excess weight

Contextual indicators

These indicators provide local authority level estimates for several topic areas that are determinants of or related to child obesity. For each topic area, where possible, the information is shown by gender, ethnicity, sexuality, region and local authority.