Maternal and Child Health Resources

Alan Guttmacher Institute
AGI focuses on reproductive health research, policy analysis, and public education. AGI publishes many reports and news briefs online, including State Policies in Brief.

Annie E. Casey Foundation
The Right Start Online: "This web site … updates previous Right Start reports by providing a text and data update focused on cities and the nation as a whole. Updated data are available as profiles, line graphs, national maps, and rankings for the nation's 50 largest cities (Plus 5 additional cities in which the Annie E. Casey Foundation has made a long-term investment) and the 50 states through 2000."

Kids Count 2008 Data Book Online
The Kids Count project tracks the health status of children in the United States. Data is provided nationally and state-by-state. All data is available from an easy-to-use, powerful online database that allows you to generate custom graphs, maps, ranked lists, and state-by-state profiles. You can also download the entire Kids Count data set as delimited text files. Some of the indicators tracked include:

Child Death Rate
Infant Mortality Rate
Juvenile Crime Arrest Rate
Median Income of Families With Children
Percent Low Birth-Weight Babies
Percent of 2-Year-Olds Who Were Immunized
Percent of Children in Poverty
Percent of Low-Income Children Without Health Insurance
Percent of Families With Children headed by a Single Parent
Percent of Female-headed Families Receiving Child Support or Alimony

California Healthy Kids Resource Center
At this site, one may "access reviewed health education material for free loan, research summaries, school health laws, programs, and consultant servcies, and links to reviewed health education websites". Subjects covered include HIV/AIDS education, nutrition education, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, mental health, and more. A newsletter is also available.

Child Trends
"Child Trends is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to studying children, youth, and families through research, data collection, and data analyses…. Child Trends gathers data on the major indicators of children's health and well-being, analyzes trends in these data over time, and works to develop new or improved indicators of child and family well-being."

Child Trends DataBank
Contains data on trends, national goals, and more on each of over 80 indicators in six broad categories: health, social and emotional development, income, assets and work, education and skills, demographics, and family and community.

Guide to Effective Programs for Children and Youth
"Child Trends has an extensive knowledge base about 'programs that work' to enhance children's development. This Guide offers a way of presenting this knowledge in a user-friendly format for policy makers, program designers, and funders." The guide may be browsed by outcome, age, and developmental stage or by program category.

Children Now
Children Now is an advocacy group focusing on family, health, and media issues. Numerous publications are available online. California County Data Book contains county-level statistics about California children's health, education, family economics and child welfare.

Children's Defense Fund
"CDF provides a strong, effective voice for all the children of America who cannot vote, lobby, or speak for themselves." Information, data, and publications are avaliable on CDF's issues of concern: child care, child health, child welfare and mental health, violence prevention and youth development, and family income.

Children's Environmental Health Network
The Children's Environmental Health Network's purpose is to protect the health of children with regards to environmental hazards. A national effort, the Network concentrates on three areas: education, research, and policy. It provides an introduction to the field of child environmental health and provides access to reports resulting from symposia and conferences.

Children's Safety Network, National Injury and Violence Prevention Resource Center
"CSN works with maternal and child health, public health, and other injury prevention practitioners to provide technical assistance and information, facilitate the implementation and evaluation of injury prevention programs, and conduct analytical and policy activities that improve the state-of-the-art of injury and violence prevention." Their site has injury prevention resources and publications, as well as data on injury related deaths and costs (at state and county levels).

ChildStats.gov
ChildStats.gov is the web site of the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, which is made up of representatives from many federal agencies and departments. The web site "offers easy access to federal and state statistics and reports on children and their families, including: population and family characteristics, economic security, health, behavior and social environment,and education."

America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being is an annual report on the status of the nation's children, presenting 25 key indicators on critical aspects of children's lives. Every two years, a detailed report is produced, alternating with a brief report on the other years. Reports from 1997 to the present are available online.

Family Health International
An international non-profit group committed to helping people obtain access to family planning services and to preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The site includes thousands of online publications, country profiles, and the journal Network.

Family Health Outcomes Project (UC San Francisco)
FHOP works to develop or adapt standardized approaches to health outcomes monitoring; longitudinal tracking and unique client identification. FHOP provides technical assistance and training to state and local health jurisdictions, and also does research on the factors which impact maternal/child health outcomes. The site includes software downloads, reports, guidelines, and planning tools, and more.

Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization
Has information about vaccine preventable diseases. Also provides access to the Vaccine Page, which provides access to up-to-the-minute news about vaccines and an annotated database of vaccine resources on the Internet.

March of Dimes
The four goals of the March of Dimes are to reduce birth defects, reduce infant mortality, reduce low birthweight, and increase the number of women who get prenatal care in the first trimester. Their site offers educational material, as well as summary national perinatal statistics.

The MCH Policy Research Center
"The MCH Policy Research Center is a health policy group that provides federal and state policymakers, public health officials, and provider and family organizations with analysis, objective research, and strategic guidance on financing and service delivery issues affecting children and adolescents, particularly those with special needs and those from low-income families." Their project areas and publications focus on Medicaid, managed care, health service delivery, provider capacity, and more.

National Adolescent Health Information Center (NAHIC)
NAHIC "is based within UCSF's Division of Adolescent Medicine. The overall goal of NAHIC is to improve the health of adolescents by serving as a national resource for adolescent health information and research and to assure the integration, synthesis, coordination and dissemination of adolescent health-related information." The site includes numerous publications, fact sheets, and an annotated links section.

NCEMCH Knowledge Paths
"NCEMCH's knowledge paths on maternal and child health-related topics contain selections of recent, high quality resources and tools for staying abreast of new developments and conducting further research. Components of a knowledge path include links to Web sites, electronic publications, databases, and discussion groups, and citations for journal articles and other print resources."

State of the World's Children 2008
"The State of the World's Children 2008 focuses on the state of child survival and primary health care for mothers, newborns and children today." Published each year, this report also includes statistical tables on health, education, economic indicators, nutiriton, and more.

Administration for Children and Families
Has the latest information on screening guidelines as well as surveillance information and recent bibliographic citations for research publications funded by CDC. Also has statistics on child care, welfare caseloads, and more.

CDC Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program
Has the latest information on screening guidelines as well as surveillance information and recent bibliographic citations for research publications funded by CDC.

Child Welfare Information Gateway
CWIG consolidates 2 clearinghouses: the National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect Information and the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse. Information available here for child abuse and negect, foster care, adoption and child welfare. Includes statistics, state laws and many publications available through their online catalog.

Bright Futures
A "national initiative to promote and improve the health and well-being of infants, children, and adolescents." Available publications include practice guidelines for nutrition, mental health, and more.

Title V: A Snapshot of Maternal and Child Health 2000
"The Snapshot provides the most comprehensive picture to date of how the Title V Federal-State Partnership works and what is happening in each of the 59 States and jurisdictions. The Snapshot includes Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block Grant to States program information, a listing of the Special Projects of Regional and National Significance (SPRANS) and other Federal MCH grants to each State and jurisdiction."

Celebrating 65 Years of Title V: The Maternal and Child Health Program (2001)
This report chronicles the development and evolution of Title V since its inception in 1935 to the present. It includes annual block grant figures for each state. (PDF file)

America's Children and the Environment: Measures of Contaminants, Body Burdens, and Illnesses, 2007-2008 update and February 2003 editions.
These reports "brings together, in one place, quantitative information from a variety of sources to show trends in levels of environmental contaminants in air, water, food, and soil; concentrations of contaminants measured in the bodies of children and women; and childhood illnesses that may be influenced by exposure to environmental contaminants."

Publications and Databases

California County Scorecard of Children's Well-Being
This scorecard tracks 26 indicators by county of the wellbeing of California's children. View results by county or by indicator. The data here comes in large part by analysis done by Children Now of 3 surveys: the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey, California Health Interview Survey and California Healthy Kids Survey.

Environmental Health Legislation Database
Sponsored by the National Conference of State Legislatures, this database includes state legislation on such topics as asthma, pesticides, lead, mercury, and indoor air pollution. All entries include brief summaries of current legislation as well as status and bill number. It is searchable by topic, keyword, state, bill number, type of bill, and date.

Healthy Families Program, California
"The Healthy Families Program is a state and federal funded health coverage program for children with family incomes above the level eligible for no cost Medi-Cal and below 250% of the federal income guidelines."

Homeless Youth: Bibliography and Resources
"This California Research Bureau (CRB) report is a resource document on the subject of homeless youth. It was compiled for the California Homeless Youth Project.... In addition to an annotated bibliography, it includes policy seminar agendas and contact information for the seminar presenters, all of whom are knowledgeable resources about homeless youth, services for this population, and/or the current research in this area."

Innovative State Strategies to Insure Children
"This database includes qualitative information collected [in 1997] from program, Medicaid, and maternal and child health directors of the following states: California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington."

National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research: Measures Registry new

"The NCCOR Measures Registry is a searchable database of diet and physical activity measures relevant to childhood obesity research. The purpose of this registry is to promote the consistent use of common measures and research methods across childhood obesity prevention and research at the individual, community, and population levels."

National Data Analysis System (Child Welfare League of America)
"NDAS is the most comprehensive collection of child welfare and related data in the country, providing access to all states' child welfare and related data for the most recent years available. Users of NDAS can develop their own tables and graphs for a state or group of states in a single year or across years." Data topics include: Administrative data, Child abuse and neglect, Children's health, Fiscal data, Outcomes, and more. There is also a section highlighting Children of Color in the Child Welfare System.

PeriStats
"PeriStats is an interactive perinatal data resource providing maternal, infant and child health-related data at the state-level and for many indicators at the county-level. Data are also available for the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the United States." Tables may also be produced that compare the data to the United States as a whole, or to other states. From the March of Dimes, PeriStats uses data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including the National Center for Health Statistics, the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, and the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention, the Health Care Financing Administration, the Health Resources Services Administration, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Governors Association, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the March of Dimes.

State of the World's Mothers 2009
The 2009 State of the World's Mothers report is the tenth in the series. Each year the report focuses on a particular issue. "Focusing on the critical importance of children’s experiences in their early years, this [2009] report suggests specific activities mothers and caregivers can do with their young children to help them reach their full potential in school." Also included is the Mothers' Index, which presents statistics on indicators of women's and children's well-being and the School Success Index for developing countries and the United States. The previous years of State of the World's Mothers reports are also available here. From Save the Children.

System Capacity for Adolescent Health: Public Health Improvement Tool
This tool, developed by the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs, is a set of assessment and discussion tools designed to assist state maternal and child health programs in assessing six areas of capacity to support effective state adolescent health programs.

Trends in the Well-Being of America's Children and Youth 2003 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation)
This report provides the policy community with comprehensive data on the well-being of children and youth. More than 80 indicators of well-being are examined in the five broad areas: Population, family, and neighborhood; Economic security; Health conditions and health care; Social development and behavioral health; and Education and achievement. Earlier editions are also available at the ASPE website.

The World's Youth 2000 (PDF)
This report, published by the Population Reference Bureau, provides worldwide regional and national data on population, education, and health, with a special focus on sexual and reproductive health.

Youth Exposure to Advertising in National Magazines, 2001-2008 (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) new

This report studies youth exposure to alcohol advertising to see if it dropped during the 2001-2008 time period, during which time leading alcohol companies had pledged to reduce the amount of advertising in magazines with significant underage audiences.

Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)
"The YRBS is a national school-based survey conducted biennially to assess the prevalence of health risk behaviors among high school students." Questionnaires, fact sheets, and some results are available from the survey.

Organizations and Agencies

Publications and Databases