Brief Ranks CA Counties on Healthful Food Options
A recent study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research shows that providing accessible, healthier food options where children live leads to healthier kids. The study focuses on the food environments in which teens live and go to school, and particularly on the amount of healthy and unhealthy food outlets available in those environments.
The brief measures the Home and School Retail Food Environment Index for each county. Healthful food outlets include grocery stores and produce vendors, and unhealthy food outlets include liquor stores, fast food restaurants, and convenience stores.
According to the brief, a majority of California counties have too many unhealthy food outlets and not enough healthy outlets in the vicinity of children and teens.
So how does your county fare? Overall, the county with the most healthful food options is Nevada County, whereas the county with least amount of healthful food options is Sutter County. See how your county fared in the study>>
Results are also broken down regionally. The Central Coast is the region with the healthiest food options, and the Sacramento area has the unhealthiest food choices. See how healthy your region’s food options are>>
On kidsdata.org, you can find related data on nutrition and children’s weight.
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: Child Health Issues, Data Sources
A Roundup of Recent News Stories: Articles About Tooth Decay, Insurance for the Poor, the Media, and More
Following are some recent news highlights about children and families from our July News Round-Up, along with related data from kidsdata.org:
Dental Care (see related data)
- Tooth Decay Prevalent Among Poor Children, Government Figures Show
(LA Times, 7/1/11, by Mascarelli)
Family Structure (see related data)
- Study: Dads Spend More Time with Children Now Than 50 Years Ago
(AP, 6/16/11, by Yen) - Study Finds Health Disparities for Single Mothers
(NY Times, 6/13/11, by Rabin)
Health Care (see related data)
- First Study of Its Kind Shows Major Benefits of Providing Medical Insurance to Poor
(NY Times, 7/7/11, by Kolata) - Opinion: For Children on Medicaid, the Doctor Is Out
(NY Times, 6/16/11, by Parker-Pope)
Media (see related data)
- Study: Youth of Color Spend More Time Consuming Media Than White Youth
(New America Media, 6/10/11)
Posted by Jordan Handcox
Tags: Child Diversity, Child Health Issues
In Case You Missed It: The Top 5 Reasons to Use Kidsdata.org
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Watch this video about the Top 5 Reasons to Use Kidsdata.org |
In any line of work on behalf of kids, kidsdata.org can be an invaluable resource for grant writing, program planning, community assessments, communications and advocacy work, policymaking, and many other in initiatives. Earlier this summer, we blogged about the Top 5 Reasons to Use Kidsdata.org. In case you missed them, here they are again:
- Kidsdata helps you use resources more efficiently by bringing together more than 35 trusted public data sources into one, free public service.
- Find and compare local data — for every city, county, and school district in California.
- Customize data for regions or demographic groups, and find the data display (map, bar graph, table, etc.) that works best for you.
- Share data instantly via social media, e-mail, or by downloading into Word, Powerpoint, or Excel.
- Stay up-to-date on new data for the children you serve via customized e-mail alerts, Kidsdata Advisory newsletters, Facebook and Twitter.
Learn how others have used kidsdata.org on our Kidsdata In Action page.
Posted by kidsdata.org
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This Week Is World Breastfeeding Week
It’s World Breastfeeding Week, and we’re celebrating by sharing updated breastfeeding data for California. Breast milk is widely acknowledged as the most complete form of nutrition for infants, and offers variety of benefits for infant health, growth, and development. Breastfeeding also offers multiple health advantages to mothers, including reducing breast and ovarian cancer risk. Increasing the proportion of children who are breastfed during the first year of life — as well as the proportion who are breastfed exclusively up to the age of three months — are important public health goals.
According to the California Department of Public Health, in 2009, 52% of infants in California were breastfed exclusively in the hospital after birth. Among counties, percentages of exclusive breastfeeding ranged widely from 14% to 86%. Find data for your county >>
Percentages also ranged among racial/ethnic groups; Caucasian/White infants had the highest exclusive breastfeeding percentages, while Hispanic/Latino and African American infants had the lowest.
Learn more about breastfeeding >>
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: Child Health Issues, Health Observances
Study Reveals Different Health Impacts of Living in Rural and Urban Areas
Despite the often-held image of clean air, fresh food, and physical activity in rural areas, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal notes that Americans who reside in cities tend to live longer, healthier lives than those in rural areas, according to a study. Among the specific findings, city-dwellers rate their own health more highly and are less likely to die prematurely than those living in rural areas.
Both urban and rural areas have positive and negative health trends, though. For example, obesity appears to be more prevalent in rural areas, with 55% of rural children ages 2 to 19 categorized as obese or overweight, compared to 45% of urban kids, according to the article. On the other hand, urban dwellers tend to have more low-birthweight babies than those in the rural areas, and children in rural areas tend to have less asthma and fewer allergies and autoimmune disorders than urban children.
According to data recently added to kidsdata.org, of the 10 million kids ages 0-17 in California, 92% (about 8.7 million) lived in urban areas in 2005-2009, while about 8% (nearly 750K) lived in rural areas (as defined using the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey definition).
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: Child Health Issues, New Data
Top 5 Reasons to Use Kidsdata.org: Reason #5 – Stay Up to Date on the Data You Need
We finish this summer’s countdown of the top 5 reasons to use kidsdata.org with reason #5 — stay informed on the child health topics that matter to you.
Kidsdata.org offers several options to keep you up to date on child health and well being:
- Sign up for e-mail alerts to receive notifications from kidsdata.org when data of interest to you are updated. Only interested in child abuse data? Or only data for Los Angeles County? E-alerts are tailored just for you.
- In addition to e-alerts, you can sign up for our regular Kidsdata Advisory e-mail newsletter, for timely data summaries about children’s health issues and news about enhancements to the site.
- And, if you’re a social media buff, you can follow us on Twitter, or “like” kidsdata.org on Facebook for daily facts and highlights of key child health issues.
- Last, but certainly not least, you can sign up to receive updates from this blog! Using the sign up box in the right column of this page, you can receive an e-mail every time we add a new post.
With all these ways to stay informed about how the kids in your community are faring, rest assured you’ll have the data you need for all your work on behalf of kids.
Posted by Felicity Simmons
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Children Now Make Up the Smallest-ever Percentage of the U.S. Population
According to a Wall Street Journal article citing 2010 Census data, the percentage of the U.S. population under age 18 is the smallest it ever has been, at 24%. This percentage is slightly lower than it was about 10 years ago (26% in 1990), but almost half of what it was at the turn of the last century (40% in 1900). See an interactive map of all states>>
In addition, 2010 Census data indicate that the child population is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. The number of children of color in the U.S. has grown since 2000, while the number of non-Hispanic white children has declined. Currently, children of color make up almost half (46%) of the national child population; non-Hispanic white children still comprise the majority (54%).
In California, unlike the nation, the total number of children rose slightly over the past decade. The state has almost 10 million kids, comprising 26% of the total population, according to 2009 data. In comparison to national figures, children of color make up a larger percentage of the child population in California (about 70%). Specifically, the racial/ethnic make-up of the state’s child population is about 49% Hispanic/Latino, 31% Caucasian/White, 10% Asian/Pacific Islander, 6% African American/Black, 4% from multiracial backgrounds, and less than 1% Native American. Consistent with national trends, the number of children of color in California has grown since 2000, while the number of Caucasian children has declined. Find data for your county>>
Also see kidsdata.org’s Research & Links section for websites and reports with more information on demographic issues, including race/ethnicity, and how that relates to child well being, such as this article from the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Health and Health Care of Children” (2010).
Posted by kidsdata.org
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Data Report Paints Bleak Picture of the ‘State of America’s Children’
The Washington D.C.-based Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) recently released a report, The State of America’s Children 2011, which illuminates striking differences between the U.S. and other industrialized countries in terms of child health and well being. In addition, the report presents state-level data for a variety of important indicators related to poverty, family structure, nutrition, juvenile justice, and gun violence.
According to the report, the U.S. ranks first in gross domestic product (GDP), first in the number of billionaires, and first in military technology. However, the U.S. ranks 30th in infant mortality, 31st in math scores, and last in teen birth rates.
Despite having the highest GDP in the world, the Census Bureau estimates that one in every five children in America is living in poverty. The numbers are the same here in California – 20% of children lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, according to 2009 data. In addition, more than half of California students are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced price school meals.
Read more about the report or download the PDF version at http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-of-americas-children-2011-report.html.
Posted by Jordan Handcox
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Top 5 Reasons to Use Kidsdata.org: Reason #4 – Share Your Data
Once you’ve found the exact data you need on kidsdata.org – and customized it how you want – there’s no need to keep it all to yourself, right? After all, with kidsdata.org, our foundation’s goal is to help promulgate data about how kids are faring, in order to help elevate the visibility of children’s issues in California.
So reason number 4 of the top 5 reasons to use kidsdata.org? You can share your results instantly using the tools in the top right corner of every data page.
For whatever data you’ve chosen, you can copy your customized graph or chart into a Word document or Powerpoint slide. Or, you can download the data directly into Excel – either just the data you’re looking at or the entire dataset – to create your own graph.
And, you can share the graph you’ve created with your friends and colleagues instantly via Facebook, Twitter, bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit, or via e-mail.
Finally, using the “<embed>” button, you can take a customized graph from kidsdata.org and put it directly on your website. Then, the graph on your site will automatically update when we add new data to kidsdata.org.
For example, this blog post on greatschools.net uses an embedded graph from kidsdata.org to show the rise in autism diagnoses over time.
Posted by Felicity Simmons
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A Looming Threat to Public Insurance Programs for Children with Special Health Care Needs
Negotiations now under way in Washington, DC, regarding the U.S. debt ceiling could have a catastrophic effect on some of California’s children with special health care needs and their families.
Many children in our state depend on public health insurance programs to meet all or part of their health care costs, through Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) or Healthy Families (California’s State Children’s Health Insurance program). The State Flexibility Act, currently under debate in Congress in conjunction with the debt negotiations, would reduce spending and allow states to make cuts in eligibility for these vital programs. Potential scenarios for California could include complete elimination of Healthy Families, and limits placed on the number of children eligible for Medi-Cal.
Such changes would have a particularly negative effect in California, where more than a third of California’s children with special health care needs already have insurance that is not adequate to meet their requirements, according to Children with Special Health Care Needs: A Profile of Key Issues in California, a report commissioned by our Foundation. Our state ranks 46th out of the 50 states on adequacy of insurance for children with special health care needs, the report notes.
The Medicaid and Healthy Families programs have contributed substantially to improving the health and well being of children, and these programs are especially critical for children with complex and chronic conditions. A new study from Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families documents how much is at stake if these programs are cut or lost. Without insurance, children may lose access to primary care, specialists, early intervention programs, or preventive services that help keep their conditions from worsening. Medicaid also helps many children live and be cared for in their homes and communities rather than in institutions.
Attempts to alter these essential public insurance programs have been made before. This time around, however, the crisis is so severe that some supporters in Congress are pessimistic. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), a longtime Medicaid advocate said, “There has been an unsettling silence around Medicaid even from members of my own party.”
As the negotiations about reducing the national debt proceed, it is imperative that we add our voices to the debate. Let your Congressional representatives and the Obama Administration know what it means for children and families to lose access to the health care they deserve.
You can find your representatives at http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd, or call
(202) 225-3121 for the Capitol switchboard and (202) 456-1414 for the White House. Ask them to protect Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
I also encourage you to join the new California Collaborative for Children with Special Health Care Needs, a statewide group developed by our Foundation that will be working toward a better system of care for children in California with special health care needs.
Posted by David Alexander, MD
Tags: Child Health Issues, CSHCN