2010 Fitness Results: Is a Slow-Down in Improvement a Momentary Blip?
When analyzing public data, don’t you often yearn for the next year of data – just one more year to help inform a phenomenon you may be seeing? A case in point is the recently released fitness data from the California Department of Education, where 2010 results seem to show a somewhat different story from previous years’ results.
From 2006 to 2009, the percentage of California 5th, 7th, and 9th graders meeting all six state fitness standards increased by about 2 percentage points annually on average, contributing to a decade-long improvement in this measure of kids’ fitness. Then, from ’09 to ’10, that improvement appeared to stall, in the form of a 0.5 percentage point increase on average for 5th, 7th, and 9th-graders in California.
Is this possible slow-down in improvement only a momentary blip? Or are we perhaps starting to see repercussions from the recession and the state’s budget woes? Over the last few years, school districts statewide have been forced to make do with less. Given budgetary demands, some districts surely are finding it more difficult to meet state requirements stipulating how much physical education students need (see this related article from the Orange County Register, as well as this editorial from Los Angeles Times). Moreover, cities across the state regularly face cutbacks that possibly mean reductions in the park and recreation services they offer.
These factors may be contributing to the small improvement in fitness scores from 2009 to 2010. But to determine what is really going on, we need 2011 data and additional analysis from the experts.
Meantime, the local perspective can help shed light on the statewide results. So we encourage our readers across California to post a comment describing what they’re seeing. Are there cutbacks to programs that provide physical education – or outdoor playtime – to children locally? If so, what kind of impact are you seeing?
Posted by Andy Krackov
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Spotlight on Asian American and Pacific Islander Children
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This map shows the Asian/Pacific Islander child population of California. The counties with the highest percentage of Asian/Pacific Islander children are in the Bay Area. |
In honor of Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re highlighting related data about this population of children in California. These data come from kidsdata.org, and if you know of other sources of data or information about Asian American or Pacific Islander kids, we encourage you to add those here.
- About 10% of California’s child population is Asian or Pacific Islander, just over 1 million children.
- In California, about 12% of Asian American children and 17% of Pacific Islander children are living below the federal poverty level, according to ’09 data.
- In ’06-’08, roughly 24% of Asian American and Pacific Islander 7th, 9th and 11th graders said they had been bullied at school at least once in the past year due to their race.
- The teen birth rate among Asian American/Pacific Islanders in California consistently has been lower than that of other racial/ethnic groups for which data are available, according to 1995-2007 data.
Visit kidsdata.org for a summary of data available for Asian American and Pacific Islander children in California, and to compare data across demographic groups.
Also see kidsdata.org’s Research & Links section, which offers key reports about these and other demographic groups.
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: Health Observances
Linking Data to Policy
The percentage of California kids living below the federal poverty level has increased in recent years.
In ‘09, there were more than 90,000 substantiated (verified) cases of child abuse/neglect in the state.
About 42% of low-income children/youth ages 5-19 were overweight or obese in California in ’09.
What can be done about these issues?
We’re beginning to address this question through a new enhancement to kidsdata.org: the inclusion of policy implications alongside each topic on kidsdata.org. These narratives describe promising and research-based policy and program ideas, conveying the message that problems revealed in the data can be addressed.
This new section has already launched for several topics, including child abuse, weight and fitness, free and reduced price school meals, and health care. It’s coming soon for all other topics.
Through this new content, our foundation aims to present a range of policy options for which there is evidence of success, and emphasize what children need to flourish in any particular area.
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: Data Challenges
Another Look at Autism Diagnoses
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control notes that rates of autism and ADHD among children are on the rise.
Earlier this year, we wrote a blog post about 2010 special education data for school districts across California. In light of the just-released CDC study, that blog entry is re-posted below.
Originally posted Feb. 3, 2011
A few years ago, we published an issue brief, “Autism Diagnoses on the Rise,” that explored the steep climb in autism diagnoses across California. So what does the trend look like these days? About the same, it turns out. Newly released data from the California Department of Education show that the growth in special education students diagnosed with autism continues unabated, from roughly 17,500 California public school students in 2002 to nearly 60,000 in 2010.
As you dig deeper, however, some other trends emerge. First, while students with autism comprise a greater share of all special education students in California compared to roughly a decade ago (from about 3% of all special education students in ’02 to about 9% in ’10), numbers are on the rise for another diagnosis, too — “other health impairment.” The California Department of Education defines this as “having limited strength, vitality or alertness, due to chronic or acute health problems, such as a heart condition, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, nephritis, asthma, sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, epilepsy, lead poisoning, leukemia, or diabetes.” Meanwhile, the percent of special education students diagnosed with a learning disability has dropped considerably, from 52% of all special education students in 2002 to 42% in 2010.
This Google animation, which uses data from kidsdata.org indicators, shows the relative growth/decrease in special education enrollments by the three conditions noted above. First click on the bar graph icon in the top-right, then press play in the bottom left.
We encourage our readers to provide some perspective on these trends. We do know that research shows that federal and state finance reform may be contributing to declining learning disability rates in California (and across the nation). As for autism, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that whether the increases are “attributable to a true increase in the risk for developing ASD [autism spectrum disorders] symptoms or solely to changes in community awareness and identification patterns is not known.” Comments from users like you can help us illuminate what’s going on both locally and statewide, and provide broader perspective on the growth in autism diagnoses.
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: CSHCN
Top 10 Health Achievements This Century
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has put together a list of the top 10 public health achievements in the first 10 years of the new millennium. The list was chosen by CDC public health scientists. In no particular order, here are 10 great accomplishments from 2001-2010:
- Vaccine-Preventable Diseases (see local data on immunizations)
- Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases
- Tobacco Control (see local data on teen smoking)
- Maternal and Infant Health (see local data on infants)
- Motor Vehicle Safety (see local data on drinking and driving)
- Cardiovascular Disease Prevention
- Occupational Safety
- Cancer Prevention (see local data on childhood cancer)
- Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention (see local data on poisoning)
- Public Health Preparedness and Response
All of the above have an impact on the health and well being of children and families. Read more here. Is there anything you’d add? Or remove?
Posted by kidsdata.org
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A Portrait of Well Being in California
Here at the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, we’re always on the lookout for compelling uses of data, so we took note of a report released this week by the American Human Development Project, “A Portrait of California.”
The report examines the well being of the people of California, using the American Human Development Index. Accompanying the index are interactive maps that show dozens of measures of health, including child poverty, life expectancy at birth, school enrollment, unemployment, and much more. Users also can find data by county, zip code, metro area, and even legislative district.
Here are a few highlights noted in the report’s fact sheets:
- Within the San Francisco metro area, life expectancy at birth ranges from 85 years in the San Mateo communities of Burlingame and Milbrae to only 74 years in the Elmhurst section of Oakland, an 11‐year gap within the same metro area.
- In Los Angeles, personal earnings are highest among whites, at $43,000 per year, followed by $35,000 for Asian Americans, $30,000 for African Americans, and $21,000 for Latinos.
- In the San Joaquin Valley, over 28 percent of adults have not completed high school.
See what’s happening in your community>>
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: Data Projects
The Skinny on Using Data for Telling Stories, Raising Funds, and Pushing Your Mission
As you may have seen, our foundation’s Andy Krackov recently wrote a guest blog post on the Nonprofit Technology Network’s blog about using Google’s free tools to animate data.
Turns out, the NTEN blog’s May theme is all things data – fundraising with data, telling stories with data, showing data in compelling ways, and much more. What could be more exciting?! Here’s a sampling of their posts:
- First, NTEN Executive Director Holly Ross tackles the issue of proving your organization’s impact through data. She discusses a four-step approach to making the most of your data: defining data, giving it meaning, using it to tell a story, and then sharing it with other organizations. Read more>>
- A guest post by Colin Holtz and Steve Daigneault of M+R Strategic Services about storytelling with data notes that sometimes the most compelling stories don’t have the most impact. Often, a more data-driven, conventional approach can better outline your accomplishments and needs, the authors say. Read more>>
- Another post from Jeff Stanger of the Center for Digital Information discusses the difference between data and information, noting that data come from research, and information comes from the communication surrounding those data. And, says Stanger, technology is constantly changing the way we collect and communicate data. Read more>>
- Most recently, NTEN Publications Director Annaliese Hoehling encourages us to think about the people behind our data, noting that data has “infinite potential for stories.” Read more>>
Kudos to NTEN for discussing so many different aspects of data in such a thoughtful way. Visit the NTEN blog for even more posts about data this month.
Posted by Felicity Simmons
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Case Study: Use Google’s Free Tools to Animate Your Data
Originally posted on the Nonprofit Technology Network blog
At the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, we publish data on children’s health and well being in California through our own www.kidsdata.org website. The site makes it easy to find, describe, and share wide-ranging facts – millions of data points in all – about how kids in California are faring.
With a robust data website like ours, why, then, would we want to make use of Google’s own data offerings, as we did on this blog post about the rise in autism diagnoses (http://www.kidsdata.org/blog/?p=2113)? In short, the charts that Google makes available are slick, especially in the way they animate data, and Google’s tools can be of benefit to wide-ranging nonprofits that work with data.
In our case, Google’s chart animation allowed us to clearly communicate the increase over time in autism diagnoses, as compared to other special education diagnoses. In the post above, click on the bar graph tab in the 2nd graph, then press play to see how Google makes it easy to animate data. The effect can be quite powerful and attention-grabbing, which is a key consideration for an organization like ours working to raise the priority of children’s health.
It’s relatively easy for nonprofits to create these charts: Just upload your own data into Google Docs (the data can be on any topic of interest to your organization), build your animation, then grab the code to put on your site/blog. Even better, Google offers this service for free (other than the roughly 30 minutes to an hour it will take you to build your animated chart).
In addition to integrating these charting capabilities into Google Docs for individual users, the search giant also is building out a comprehensive site, Google Public Data Explorer, which, so far, offers dozens of indicators from data sources worldwide.
Our foundation is experimenting with Google’s Public Data Explorer, too (nonprofits can upload public data into this system). Our thinking is that if we can make data available through Google itself, we may get even more exposure to the issues to which we’re trying to bring attention.
Unlike Google Docs, however, we’ve found that Google’s system to upload data into Public Data Explorer – called Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL) – is somewhat cumbersome to use, requiring us to have at least some programming knowledge. This requirement has slowed us down, but we’re still trying to figure out how this new language works, especially as Google transitions DSPL into something more user-friendly for those uploading data.
The upside of using Public Data Explorer is too significant for us to ignore. After all, given its reach, Google has the capacity to draw more attention to our data than we potentially can through kidsdata.org (the same surely applies to most nonprofits). And, once these data are uploaded, Public Data Explorer offers some engaging data displays. So we’re hoping that Google will simplify the upload process for Public Data Explorer – that is, the DSPL language – to the point where it will be worth our time to add our data to Google’s own site.
Posted by Andy Krackov
Tags: Data Challenges
Even More Data Available for Small Regions – See How Kids in Your Community Are Faring
Nine measures of demographic and income data recently were updated on kidsdata.org. These data, which come to us from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, include three-year estimates (2007 – 2009) for California counties, cities, and school districts with 20,000 or more residents. Data for these regions are aggregated across three years in order to provide reliable estimates. These data can be helpful in understanding population trends and planning services and investments for children and families. Soon kidsdata.org will offer five-year estimates for regions with populations of at least 10,000.
Data updates for regions of 20,000 residents or more include:
- Households with and without children
- Family structure among households with children (single or married parents)
- Children in poverty
- Median family income
- Child population
- Foreign-born population by age group
- Children in the care of grandparents
Here are some interesting highlights of the ’07-’09 data:
- Of all California counties with available data, San Francisco had the smallest percentage of households with children (18%). Click here for a large-scale, interactive map of the data to see regional differences.
- The percentage of households with kids headed by married couples in California also varied by county, from over 75% in Santa Clara, San Mateo and Marin, to about 53% in Del Norte.
- Of California cities with available data, Cupertino, in Santa Clara County, had the highest percentage of foreign-born children ages 5-17, with 23%, compared to 8% statewide. Two other cities have 20% or more – Arcadia and Glendale, both in Los Angeles County.
- From ’05-’07 to ’07-’09, the percentage of children living below the federal poverty level increased in 28 California counties.
- Median family income varies widely across California cities, from $32,534 annually in Corcoran (Kings County) to $184,837 in Los Altos (Santa Clara County) in ’07-’09. Here is another map highlighting these regional differences across the state.
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: New Data
Just Added: Survey Data About Health Care, Asthma, and Teen Sexual Health
Our most recent addition to kidsdata.org: 2009 data from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) on health care, asthma diagnoses, and teens who say they have not had sex. Highlights of these data are noted below.
Health Care Data Highlights:
- In most regions for which data are available, more than 90% of children were insured in ’09.
- The percentage of California children with employer-based health care has decreased, while the percentage with public insurance increased.
- Read our recent data advisory for more details.
Teen Sexual Health Data Highlight:
- An estimated 81% of California teens ages 14-17 in ’09 reported that they have not had sex, similar to previous years.
Asthma Data Highlights:
- About 13% of California kids have been diagnosed with asthma, according to survey estimates.
- Statewide, asthma diagnoses declined slightly from 2005 to 2009.
The California Health Interview Survey is sponsored by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. For more data from the survey, visit http://www.askchis.org.
Posted by kidsdata.org
Tags: New Data