Originally posted on Health Databytes, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research blog

They say every picture tells a story. At the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, we believe that every data point has the potential to tell a story. That’s why we operate our flagship website, www.kidsdata.org.

Kidsdata.org consolidates hundreds of indicators at the state, county, city, and school district level that help paint of picture of how children in California are faring. Data are drawn from the California Department of Education, the Census Bureau, the California Healthy Kids Survey, and dozens of other sources – including, of course, the California Health Interview Survey. The stories these data tell can be used to help bring attention to key children’s issues, and to support funding requests.

At the foundation, we’ve developed number of approaches – mostly through trial and error – for using data for storytelling. Here are some relatively low-cost tactics that have proven particularly effective for us.

• Tell a Story Yourself; Create a Data Slideshow. For a number of recent announcements about updated data on kidsdata.org, we’ve build simple data slideshows to summarize how children are faring for a particular topic, such as weight or child welfare. We like to make these slideshows visually compelling by showing data in multiple views – trend and pie graphs, maps, etc. – and we design them as high level, compact summaries of an issue.

Since we’ve begun to highlight these data slideshows in e-mail announcements about recently updated data, they’ve become the most clicked-on links. It’s not unusual for us to hear about people making use of these slideshows in their own work, such as an instructor who wanted to download the weight slideshow for use in an online class for California teachers.

• Localize the Data.  While it’s not always easy to do, it pays to invest time to provide, or just link to, local data when you can. Websites like AskCHIS or kidsdata.org can help you accomplish this. We’ve found, for example, that our e-mails are more viral when we include direct links to data by school district. Similarly, when we meet with staff for elected officials, we prepare some graphs to show with data for their region.

Through kidsdata.org, you can drill down to find the data you need at the specificity you desire, and once you do, you can download your graphs and tables for use in Word or PowerPoint, or even embed charts and maps into your own website or blog.

• Treat Data Storytelling as a Campaign, not a One-Time Mention. If you’re getting ready to communicate data from a study you’re releasing, or if you want to use data to support an advocacy position your organization is taking, think about how you can communicate these data in a sustained way, given that some key constituents may not necessarily pay attention at a particular moment. The story you’re telling with the data doesn’t need to be told all at once; sometimes installments can work well.  With kidsdata, for example, we offer a fact of the day through Twitter, and journalists/policymakers sometimes retweet these facts to their audiences.

Know of other strategies? We encourage you to add them to this list.

Posted by Andy Krackov

Reason number 3 in our countdown of the top 5 reasons to use kidsdata.org helps you get exactly what you want. Customize.

On kidsdata.org, you can tailor the data to reflect the region, year, and/or demographic breakdown relevant to you or the kids you are serving. Depending on the source, data are available by age, gender, grade level, racial/ethnic group, or socioeconomic status.

Want to know the percentage of 9th grade Asian American students in your school district who are at a healthy weight? Or how many low-income third graders are proficient in reading? Kidsdata.org can tell you.

And once you’ve drilled down to find what you’re looking for, you can view your results as maps, bar graphs, pie charts, tables, or trends over time. All the tools you need to tell your story — right at your fingertips.

Posted by Felicity Simmons

We recently updated two related measures of children’s health and well being – injury hospitalizations and self-inflicted injuries. Following are some highlights about what these data tell us about how kids in California are faring:

• 2009 data from the California Department of Public Health show that, for California children/youth ages 0-20, the rate of hospitalizations for non-fatal injuries has generally declined since 2000. Unintentional injuries account for the vast majority (almost 75% in 2009) of the total number of injuries, and injury hospitalization rates vary greatly among California counties, from about 150 per 100,000 kids/youth to more than 400 in 2009. Learn more about these data>>

• The rate of youth self-inflicted injury hospitalizations in California also has dropped since 2000. County-level rates varied from about 19 per 100,000 children/youth ages 5-20 to more than 60 per 100,000 in 2009. Learn more about self-inflicted injuries>>

• Injury hospitalizations, whether self-inflicted or due to other causes, are most common among youth ages 16-20.

Posted by kidsdata.org

The Department of Health and Human Services recently announced that it will begin collecting data on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations, to better understand and address health disparities. The department also announced new draft standards for collecting and reporting data on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status. According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, “The data we will eventually collect in these efforts will serve as powerful tools and help us in our fight to end health disparities.” The race/ethnicity standards, for example, will improve data collection for various racial and ethnic subgroups, especially among Asian, Hispanic/Latino and Pacific Islander populations.

Posted by kidsdata.org

See this recent article on teen alcohol and drug use in the U.S.

Here in California:

• Nearly 40 percent of male 11th-graders say they have tried marijuana at least once in their lifetime. Just over one-quarter report that they have tried it four times or more.
• 37 percent of 11th-grade girls reported drinking alcohol in the past 30 days.
• Nearly one-third (31%) of 11th grade boys reported ever smoking a cigarette.
• Statewide, about 20% of 11th grade girls and 24% of 11th grade boys reported binge drinking at least once in the past 30 days.

These data come from the 2006-2008 California Healthy Kids Survey (WestEd). Find more data on alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs on kidsdata.org.

Posted by Jordan Handcox

This week, we continue counting down the Top 5 reasons to use kidsdata.org with an emphasis on the local data available on the site.

County data are good, but city and school district data are even better. On kidsdata.org, we have all three — with statewide comparisons, of course. Better yet, you can compare these local regions to each other to see how children in your community are faring vs. another locale, or any set of regions that you choose.

An example of putting local data into action comes from the Beaumont Unified School District in Riverside County, who reported using kidsdata.org when visiting the Legislative Action Committee for Child Nutrition in Washington, D.C., to give legislators “a snapshot of our district.”

Here’s a sampling of just some of the data on kidsdata.org that are available at a very local level:

• Child population, family structure, immigration, family income, and poverty for regions of 20,000 residents or more.
• College readiness, high school dropouts, math proficiency, and more education data, available by school district.
• Emotional and behavioral health data including alcohol and drug use, dating violence, gang involvement, bullying, depression, and much more, available by school district.

How have you made use of the local data on kidsdata.org for your region?

Posted by Felicity Simmons

This guest post is by Kalyn Gereg, administrative specialist with the Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency

Recently released by the Children’s Services Network of Tulare County, the Children’s Report Card presents data on 24 demographic, economic, and health-related indicators, providing a synopsis of the status of children and families in this Central Valley county. Four generalized outcome areas are represented, including health indicators for children and youth; school readiness of younger children; economic self-sufficiency of families; and family and community safety.

The Children’s Report Card shows that Tulare County is doing better in several areas, but many challenges remain. The rate of births to teens in Tulare County has been far above the state rate for several years; however, a decrease in recent years is a notable improvement. Other areas of improvement include physical fitness levels, number of children in foster care, and children with required immunizations.

The purpose of the Children’s Report Card is to inform and educate the community; to raise awareness of the need for targeted interventions to improve outcomes; and to highlight “promising practices” contributing to improved outcomes. Data reports such as these help policymakers, funders, service providers, and community leaders make informed decisions regarding planning and implementing services throughout the community.

Please read the full report on the Children’s Services Network of Tulare County website, http://www.tccsn.org. See a profile of data about children in Tulare County on kidsdata.org at http://www.kidsdata.org/tulare.

Posted by kidsdata.org

Following the completion of kidsdata.org’s statewide expansion last summer, our foundation pointed out the top 5 reasons to use the site. This summer, in order to mark the one-year anniversary of the website going statewide, we’ll highlight each of those Top 5 — in no particular order — and share some examples of how kidsdata is being used to improve the lives of children across California.

This week, we feature Reason #1 to Use Kidsdata.org — to save time, money, and effort. Ok, maybe that’s three reasons; but they’re all about using resources efficiently — something for which we all strive.

Why surf the web for hours looking for 10 different data points for a grant proposal when you may be able to find them all in one place? (Hint: that place is kidsdata.org) As a public service, we offer free access to data from more than 35 public data sources.

For example, the Central California Children’s Institute says they use kidsdata “almost on a daily basis to look for socioeconomic, health, safety and education data on children of the eight-county-wide San Joaquin Valley region.”

What a time-saver!

Has kidsdata.org helped you save time or money? Tell us about it!

Posted by Felicity Simmons

We recently updated two important measures of the well being of California students: homelessness and high school dropouts.

Data from ’09 on high school dropouts, from the California Department of Education, indicate that an estimated one in five public high school students in California (22%) will drop out at some point during high school. These data also are available at the county and school district level. Find data for your school district>>

The data show wide disparities among racial/ethnic groups. The lowest estimated dropout rates are for Asian American and Filipino students (about 10%). African American/Black, Native American, Hispanic/Latino, and Pacific Islander students have the highest estimated dropout rates, at or above 25%.

For homelessness, data are available at the state level and show that about 3% — or nearly 194,000 — public school students in grades K-12 were homeless in 2010. The data source, the National Center for Homeless Education, designates a student as homeless if their primary nighttime residence is a shelter, hotel or motel, a shared space with another family due to economic hardship, or no shelter. Learn more about these data>>

Posted by kidsdata.org