Remote Pediatric Growth Tracking May Shed Light on Underserved Communities
(Adobe Stock)
By Emily Ho, PhD and Andrew Nellis
March 10, 2025
A new study led by researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine found that parents and caregivers can reliably measure key pediatric growth metrics — such as height, weight, and body fat — remotely with minimal instruction, producing results comparable to trained professionals.
Why it matters: Remotely assessing growth metrics could improve pediatric health monitoring, making it easier for researchers and clinicians to track childhood development for families living in rural or underserved areas. The approach could help those families avoid frequent, long-distance clinic visits.
Key Findings:
- Caregiver-administered assessments showed high concordance with those performed by trained professionals (over 90%).
- The study assessed 199 children aged 2-17 across six U.S. sites.
- Spanish-speaking caregivers demonstrated measurement accuracy on par with English-speaking counterparts.
The Big Picture: The study is part of a large NIH-funded program called Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO), which aims to understand the role a child’s environment has on their health and development. Now in its second cycle, ECHO has assessed over 64,000 children and counting.
Previous research has shown that metrics such as height, weight, and waist circumference can be used to calculate cardiometabolic risk factors in younger children. Allowing parents to conduct these measurements at home could increase the diversity of pediatric research populations and follow participants over longer periods of time.
Remote assessments could be a feasible and valid alternative to traditional in-person methods, particularly for families with limited access to healthcare”
From the author: “Our findings suggest that remote assessments could be a feasible and valid alternative to traditional in-person methods, particularly for families with limited access to healthcare," said Emily H. Ho, PhD, assistant professor of Medical Social Sciences. “Already, we’re seeing this approach implemented into large-scale studies like the ECHO Program, offering a real-life example of rapid start-up to scale.”
What’s Next: As remote healthcare adoption expands, these findings may support broader implementation of at-home pediatric assessments, reducing disparities in child health monitoring.
Other authors involved in the study include Berivan Ece, PhD, research assistant professor of Medical Social Sciences; Zutima Tuladhar, MS, research project coordinator in the Department of Medical Social Sciences; Anne Zola, MS; Magdalena Ewa Kupczyk, MPH, project manager in the Department of Medical Social Sciences; Linda Adair, PhD, Professor in the Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; and Richard Gershon, PhD, Division Chief of Outcome and Measurement Science and Professor in the Department of Medical Social Sciences.