Producing Synthetic Estimates of Children’s Health and Well-Being for Local Areas

Mark S. Mather, Population Reference Bureau (PRB)
Beth Jarosz, Population Reference Bureau (PRB)
Linda A. Jacobsen, Population Reference Bureau (PRB)

While child health data are readily available for the nation and states, city- and county-level health departments have numerous constraints in obtaining generalizable, valid, and reliable child health data for understanding health status, community based needs assessments, and population health improvement efforts. In this session, we will summarize the methods and results of a new project that combines data from the National Survey of Children’s Health and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to produce synthetic local area estimates of children’s health and well-being. The synthetic estimates are constructed by applying state prevalence rates, broken down by race/ethnicity and family income, to race- and income-specific population estimates at the substate level.