BMI: preventing ill health and premature death in black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups | Guidance and guidelines

Guidance

This guideline covers the link between body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference and the risk of disease among adults from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups in the UK. The aim was to determine whether lower cut-off points should be used for these groups as a trigger for lifestyle interventions to prevent conditions such as diabetes, myocardial infarction or stroke.

The guideline does not include women who are pregnant.

NICE has also produced guidelines on preventing type 2 diabetes (this guideline extends those recommendations to black African and African-Caribbean groups) and obesity.

Recommendations

This guideline includes recommendations on:

Who is it for?

Healthcare and health improvement professionals
Exercise referral practitioners
Directors and managers of public health, local authority, voluntary and non-government organisations
Providers of lifestyle weight management services
People from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups and other members of the public

Is this guideline up to date?

We checked this guideline in May 2018. We propose to withdraw the guideline and incorporate the recommendations into NICE's guideline on obesity: identification, assessment and management.

Guideline development process

How we develop NICE guidelines

This guideline was previously called ‘assessing body mass index and waist circumference thresholds for intervening to prevent ill health and premature death among adults from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups in the UK’.

Your responsibility

The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.

Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.

Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.