Assessment of changes in a child's body length during a health-improving shift with consideration of physical development, gender and age differences as an indicator of the effectiveness of health improvement

Abstract

Methodological evaluation of the effectiveness of recuperation of children at the present time, according to many authors, requires revision and improvement. One of the traditionally used criteria for assessing the effectiveness of recuperation are somatometric indicators. The aim of the study was to assess the dynamics of the body length of the child during the health-improving shift (21 days) taking into account age and gender differences in order to further substantiate the applied criteria for assessing the effectiveness of health improvement. The object of the study was children of 7–17 years old (n = 18 081) who stayed at 52 stationary recreation and health improvement organizations and who got the high recuperation. effect during the change. Assessment of recuperation efficiency was conducted according to the currently existing methodological recommendations for assessing the effectiveness of recuperation in 2018, data collection and primary analysis were carried out by means of the software tool «Assessment of recuperation efficiency» developed by FBSI «Novosibirsk Research Institute of Hygiene» of Rospotrebnadzor. The database was processed using parametric and nonparametric methods of statistical analysis. It was reliably established that children with underweight and deficit had a smaller mean value of growth gain than children in other physical development groups, also in this physical development group the lowest proportion of children who had growth gain was noted. At the same time, no reliable differences were found between the average values of growth gain in children of different age groups. The above identified patterns can be used in adjusting the integral assessment of the effectiveness of health promotion.