Interpreting Weight, Height, and Body Mass Index Percentiles in the CDC Growth Charts—Reply

In Reply We appreciate Akinbami, Ogden, and Freedman’s thoughtful comments on our article. As Akinbami and Ogden note, back-to–birth weight conversations generally do not specifically reference growth charts, so perhaps our title would have better referred to conversations about growth rather than growth charts. However, we stand by our conclusion that an overly literal focus on back-to–birth weight rules may lead to unwarranted concern among parents of infants with high birth weight. Our title reflects our primary observation that there are challenges surrounding our conversations about growth, not that there are errors in the growth charts themselves. As pediatric generalists with a research focus on clinical communication, our goal was to draw attention to common sources of confusion in clinical discussions of growth.