Pediatric growth charts

Tracking the physical growth of infants, children, and adolescents is a fundamental component of delivering health care to children in the U.S. The regular use of pediatric growth charts is an invaluable resource when it comes to evaluating your young patients’ statistics.

To help you, current pediatric growth charts are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at www.cdc.gov/growthcharts. To request paper copies of the growth charts, call the CDC at 301-458-4636.

How to use clinical growth charts

The CDC provides resources for clinicians to assist them in using and interpreting the CDC growth charts to assess physical growth in children and adolescents. By using these charts, providers can compare growth in infants, children, and adolescents with a nationally representative reference based on children of all ages and racial or ethnic groups. Comparing both measurements with the appropriate age-and-gender-specific growth chart enables health care providers to monitor growth and identify potential health or nutrition related problems.

For information related to the CDC’s web-based interactive training modules and tools, please visit www.cdc.gov/growthcharts.