PRB

The Challenge

Advocates and community members need evidence-based resources to support their efforts to advance children’s well-being in California.

The KidsData project makes data on the health and well-being of California’s children accessible to policymakers, service providers, grant seekers, media, parents, and others who influence children’s lives. The project provides context that distills key research and works with the user community to empower advocates and community members by providing them with resources they can use.

Our Approach

We collect current and historical data for nearly 60 topics of child well-being from more than 35 sources. Topic strengths include adverse childhood experiences; child poverty; and physical, emotional, and behavioral health. We also extensively cover child safety, childcare, education, demographic projections, homelessness, safety net programs, and more. We draw on data sources that include the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, California state agencies’ data files, and health surveys such as the National Survey of Children’s Health, California Healthy Kids Survey, and California Health Interview Survey. Data are provided for California’s counties, cities, school districts, and state legislative districts.

We have also developed innovative estimation methods to improve access to data on child health topics for some demographic subgroups and in small geographic regions. The KidsData program raises awareness about important data findings and demographic and geographic disparities in child health and well-being through newsletters, social media, and presentations. Through a network of collaborations with other organizations, we provide substantive and technical expertise to support beneficial outcomes in shared interest areas of children’s well-being. Data are available at www.KidsData.org.

KidsData.org is a source that I use on a regular basis for factual, non-partisan data.

– Debbie Look, California Assembly member

Impacts & Outcomes

PRB, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health (LPFCH), and The Children’s Partnership partnered on an analysis of the implications for child health of changes to the Public Charge Rule. Through this analysis we found that nearly 180,000 noncitizen children in California would be at direct risk of losing their health insurance coverage—mostly Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)—under the revised rule. An additional 1.6 million citizen children of noncitizen parents in California could also be at risk. Learn more.

PRB analyzed trends in public health insurance (such as Medicaid and CHIP) among children in California. Through this analysis, we discovered that in 2015 and 2016, seven in 10 children in California participated in Medicaid or CHIP, either temporarily or year-round. Using these data, LPFCH wrote an advisory that sparked discussion of children’s health insurance among state legislators. Learn more.