Visits to a pediatrician next year might look a little different thanks to a new growth curve chart slated to be released in the spring of 2006.

And a Calvin College professor is currently working in Geneva, Switzerland getting ready for that release.

Allen Shoemaker, a professor of psychology, is back in Geneva working with the . He first hooked up with the WHO in 1997 when he spent a sabbatical analyzing data on child growth rates.

Now, says Shoemaker, based on his work and other research the WHO is going ahead with its plan to publish new growth curve charts.

In fact he is spending the month of August working at the World Health Organization to reanalyze nations' growth rates against the new growth curves.

The old curves, Shoemaker says, were largely based on just U.S. children, many of whom were bottle fed. The WHO, he notes, advocates breast feeding, which generates a different growth rate.

"Because of these concerns, he says, "the World Health Organization is developing new growth curves based on healthy children from several nations around the world."

And, he notes, whereas the last curve was largely descriptive, this one will be prescriptive.

"The new curves," he says, "could affect the number of children classified as malnourished."

Shoemaker says that the new curves are classified because the WHO wants the results analyzed free from any political influence.

"Several developing nations," he says, "might be concerned about having a higher rate of malnourished children compared to the old charts, but they will have to wait along with everyone else. The new curves and how nations compare against them won't be released until they are all ready in the spring of 2006."

Shoemaker's 1997 sabbatical arose from a research project in Grand Rapids with a team of researchers from Butterworth Hospital, Grand Rapids Area Medical Education Center and Michigan State University - along with the help of several Calvin psychology student interns - that investigated causes of low birthweight babies born to disadvantaged mothers in the Grand Rapids area. That led to his connection with the WHO and his work on baby weights around the world.

"Here in the United States," he says, "if we want to see if a child is developing normally, we take them to the doctor's offfice, measure them, compare the reading with the 'growth chart' and make comparisons from that. It turns out, though, that that 'growth chart' is what is normal growth for middle-class white children who were bottle fed. Breast feeding creates a different growth rate. For comparisons with most U.S. white children, these problems are minor. However, when we start to use that same chart for comparison to children of different races in underdeveloped countries, then major problems arise, both statistically and politically. If those infants are smaller than 'normal' (as defined by U.S. standards) is that due to ethnic differences, breastfeeding differences, malnutrition or some combination?"