Educating parents in dealing with childhood obesity through the use of the BMI monitor app

Childhood obesity has now reached an alarming level among children around the world. It affects one out of every ten children all over the world. While in Malaysia, overweight child is 38 percent of the child population. If it is not effectively curbed, childhood obesity will cause many problems.Previous studies have shown that parents are responsible for their children’s well-being and their involvement is the most influential treatment of childhood obesity.With the advent of mobile technology, various mobile apps have been developed to manage people's daily lives. This paper elaborates on the development of the BMI monitor app, a mobile application which is intended to be used by parents to monitor their children's Body Mass Index (BMI).It uses the BMI Percentile method which is recommended by pediatricians worldwide.This app enables parents to store all the BMI records of the children and also provides advices to help parents to deal with the childhood obesity problems.This paper also discusses on the outcome of an evaluation that has been conducted among a sample of parents towards the use of the app.It is hoped that the use of the app will ease the parents in monitoring their children's BMI status and eventually formed them to be more responsible parents.

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