Introduction to the Special Issue of Articles from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health

Excerpt

Children’s health and well-being can be measured using a variety of metrics. Very often these measures are drawn from data systems which provide primarily national estimates of domain-specific indicators. The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) is unique among these systems in that it collects information on a comprehensive set of physical, mental and social health indicators among children, their access to and utilization of health services as well as family and community level factors that have been shown to influence health and development. The survey is designed to provide both national- and state-level estimates which are necessary for the development, implementation, and monitoring of effective health promotion and disease prevention programs for children and their families. As such, the NSCH fills a critical void and is the only data system that provides comparable estimates of children’s health from birth to age 17 across every state in the nation. Reflecting a sustained commitment on the part of the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the 2007 NSCH is the second such effort, building on the success of the first NSCH in 2003 to collect accurate and timely information on the health and well-being of children and their families with a third round of the NSCH (2011) soon to be publicly available. The 2007 NSCH not only provides updated estimates of child health at both national and state levels but, coupled with the 2003 NSCH, also provides the capacity to evaluate national, regional, and state trends as well as the impact of federal and state-level programs and policies. …