Introduction The extent that the dual burden of undernutrition and overnutrition affects refugee children before resettlement in the US is not well described. Objective To describe the prevalence of wasting, stunting, overweight, and obesity among refugee children ages 0-10 years at their overseas medical screening examination prior to resettlement in Washington State (WA), and to compare the nutritional status of refugee children with that of low-income children in WA. Methods We analyzed anthropometric measurements of 1047 refugee children ages 0-10 years old to assess their nutritional status at the overseas medical screening examination prior to resettlement in WA from July 2012-June 2014. The prevalence estimates of the nutritional status categories were compared by country of origin. In addition, the nutritional status of refugee children age 0-5 years old were compared to that of low-income children in WA from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Pediatric Nutrition Surveillance System. Results A total of 982 children were eligible for the study, with the majority (65%) from Somalia, Iraq and Burma. Overall, nearly one-half of all refugee children had at least one form of malnutrition (44.9%). Refugee children ages 0-10 years were affected by wasting (17.3%), stunting (20.1%), overweight (7.6%) and obesity (5.9%). Among children 0-5 years old, refugee children had a significantly higher prevalence of wasting (14.3% versus 1.9%, p<0.001) and stunting (21.3% versus 5.5%, p<0.001), and a lower prevalence of obesity (6.2% versus 12.9%, p<0.001) than low-income children in WA. Conclusion The dual burden of under-and over-nutrition among incoming refugee children as well as their overall difference in prevalence of nutritional status categories compared to lowincome children in WA provides evidence for the importance of tailored interventions to address the nutritional needs of refugee children. © 2016 Dawson-Hahn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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wasting syndrome refugee stunting lowest income group mass screening poverty human Refugees controlled study obesity Iraq comparative study United States Humans Infant, Newborn male preschool child female Infant Child, Preschool newborn Myanmar prevalence Article Somalia malnutrition anthropometry nutritional status Child