Visit the Data Resource Center (DRC) at booth #2039 at the upcoming APHA annual meeting October 30-November 2 in Washington, DC. Come see our newly renovated booth where you can tour our new website and learn how to use data on child and adolescent health to promote quality care and support healthy communities.  

The Health and Well-Being of Children in Rural Areas

The Health and Well-Being of Children in Rural Areas, just released by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, features data from the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) and demonstrates that children in rural areas do face unique health challenges. The following highlights are included in this new report:

• Children living in rural areas are more likely to have public insurance, such as Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program than urban children.
• The percentage of children with chronic conditions such as obesity, asthma and diabetes is highest amongst teenagers living in small rural areas. 

Find out about urban and rural children in your state by looking at any indicator on the DRC website and choosing "Urban/Rural Residence" as a subgroup. For example, are rural or urban children more likely to live in supportive communities?

Children's Health Care Quality Across States

Quality care counts. Click on the map to view your state data.

The NSCH and National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (NS-CSHCN) provide a range of health care system performance and quality of care measures, many of which are now endorsed by the National Quality Forum and are profiled in the DRC state specific Child Health and Systems Performance State Snapshots.

These snapshots include many of the 18 child health and health care quality measures that have been endorsed by the National Quality Forum. Endorsed measures include:

• Children who receive care within a medical home
• Children with inadequate current health insurance coverage
• Children who receive preventive medical visits

Using data from the 2007 NSCH, these snapshots show that only 41.3% of children in the U.S. are estimated to meet a minimum index of quality care assessing whether children experience having a medical home AND have had at least one preventive visit in the past 12 months AND have health insurance that is adequate to meet their needs. The number of children meeting this minimum index of quality ranges from 30.3% to 55.5% across states. 

New Child Health Quality Publications

Read more about child health quality measures in these recently published articles using 2007 NSCH data: Rates of Parent-Centered Developmental Screening: Disparities and Links to Services Access Pediatrics, June 2011  A National and State Profile of Leading Health Problems and Health Care Quality for US Children: Key Insurance Disparities and Across-State Variations Academic Pediatrics, May/June 2011   View a complete list of articles published on studies using the 2007 NSCH and 2005/06 NS-CSHCN data.