Next review: To be scheduled
This guidance aimed to determine whether lower cut-off points should be used for black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups in the UK as a trigger for lifestyle interventions to prevent conditions such as diabetes, myocardial infarction or stroke.
It is aimed at commissioners, managers and practitioners with public health as part of their remit working within local authorities, the NHS and the wider public, private, voluntary and community sectors.
The evidence confirms that these groups are at an equivalent risk of diabetes, other health conditions or mortality at a lower BMI than the white European population. But it was not sufficient to make recommendations on the use of new BMI and waist circumference thresholds to classify whether members of these groups are overweight or obese.
There was also insufficient evidence to make recommendations on the full range of health conditions considered, or all-cause mortality (most of the evidence came from diabetes studies).
As a result, this guidance supports previously published NICE recommendations on diabetes prevention and extends them to black African and African-Caribbean groups. It also highlights recommendations from NICE and other sources in relation to awareness raising, BMI measurement and thresholds that can be used as a trigger for intervening.
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 are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users 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 compliance with those duties.