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Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health Offers Powerful Data Tools for Media, Policymakers

Kidsdata.org unearths surprising children’s health data, including data on infant mortality, obesity, family income, child care

SACRAMENTO, CA – Consider: California’s infant mortality rate is not only decreasing, but the data also show that it’s at the lowest recorded level in over a decade. That’s the good news. The bad news is that mortality rates for California’s African-American/Black and multiracial infants were more than double the rates of other racial/ethnic groups.

These facts, and many other surprising and informative findings, can be found on the www.kidsdata.org data center. The website is free to the public, thanks to funding and management by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health.

The foundation takes existing public data and packages it in user-friendly ways that make it a highly effective research tool for those interested in children’s health. Kidsdata.org also provides contextual information on the significance of the data for children’s health, and lists some high-level policy implications based on research and expert opinion.

“We hope that these data sets and analyses will spark discussion and debate among the media and policymakers,” says David Alexander, MD, president and CEO of the foundation. “Our ultimate goal is to bring more attention to children and help advance policies that effectively address their health and well being.”

For example, kidsdata.org recently released local data that track the rise in the cost for California families to make ends meet from ’08 to ’11. Also just published: data for each county in California measuring the cost, availability, and potential demand for child care.

In all, kidsdata.org reports on more than 60 topics related to children’s physical and emotional health, safety, and well being. Researchers can find data for every county, city, school district, and legislative region in California. The data can be sorted by ethnicity, age, and numerous other variables.  

The site also helps users present data in compelling ways, and offers tools to help them share their findings, says Andy Krackov, assistant vice president of Programs & Partnerships at the foundation. Visitors, for example, can copy charts and graphs into Word or PowerPoint, and download data into Excel. Users also can build their own maps and graphs to embed onto other websites and blogs. As data are updated on kidsdata.org, these embedded charts automatically are updated, too. 

A new tool allows users to capture data in easy-to-print PDF format, providing a concise summary of data for each of kidsdata’s topics, as well as for roughly 1,800 geographic regions and 10 demographic groups. To view these fact sheets, visit http://www.kidsdata.org/datasummaries/.

The data summaries, designed to be one page (front and back), are populated with continually updated data from kidsdata.org’s database, and are valuable for a variety of uses:

  • Quick, up-to-date handouts about the status of children for meetings or advocacy work

  • Inexpensive brochures for events and presentations

  • Offline reference material about children’s health in your community

You also can keep up to date on the issues that matter to you by signing up for kidsdata.org’s e-mail alerts, a free, public service that provides you with quick data updates on topics and regions that you select.

For more information or a demonstration of kidsdata.org, contact Andy Krackov at andy.krackov@lpfch.org or (650) 736-0677.

About Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health works in alignment with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the child health programs of Stanford University. The foundation’s mission is to elevate the priority of children’s health, and increase the quality and accessibility of children’s health care through leadership and direct investment.

About Kidsdata.org

Kidsdata.org, a program of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, is a public service that allows users to easily find, customize, and share data on more than 400 measures of child health and well being. Data are available for every legislative district, city, county, and school district in California. User-friendly displays make it easy to incorporate data from more than 35 trusted public sources into reports, presentations, grant proposals, policy decisions, media stories, and advocacy work.