New 2024 NSCH Data Now Available

Access Hundreds of Estimates from the 2024 National Survey of Children's Health on CAHMI's Data Resource Center (childhealthdata.org).

The Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health (DRC), a project of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI) supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), is excited to announce the launch of new single-year 2024 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) data on the DRC’s Interactive Data Query (IDQ). Get “point-and-click” access to estimates for more than 350 child, youth, and family measures, including National Performance Measures (NPMs), National Outcome Measures (NOMs), and Standardized Measures (SMs).

Designed to produce state and national-level representative estimates, the 2024 NSCH includes data from 51,375 children ages 0-17 years on a wide range of topics, including physical, mental, and emotional health; health care access and quality; community and school activities; and family health and well-being.

Access national, state, and regional data on the DRC’s interactive data query!

DRC Measures Highlight: School Readiness and Child Flourishing

School readiness (ages 3–5) reflects whether young children are developing the skills needed to successfully transition into school. This composite measure captures five domains of early development: early learning, social-emotional development, self-regulation, motor development, and health.

Child flourishing reflects positive aspects of children’s social and emotional well-being, including curiosity and interest in learning, resilience, secure relationships with parents, and overall contentment. These strengths are increasingly recognized as key building blocks for healthy development and learning.

Measures of school readiness and child flourishing provide critical insights into the early foundations that support children’s long-term health and well-being. Using the DRC Interactive Data Query (IDQ) subgroup feature, users can explore how these measures relate to one another and what they reveal about early childhood development in the United States. The NSCH data illustrates a strong relationship between these measures with higher levels of flourishing associated with higher degrees of school readiness. These findings highlight the importance of nurturing children’s social, emotional, and developmental strengths in the early years to support readiness for school and lifelong well-being.

The ability to stratify measures in the IDQ extends beyond school readiness and child flourishing. Users can also explore how outcomes vary by family resilience and a range of other child and family characteristics. Learn more in our new guide: Using the DRC to Look at Subgroups.

Quick Links to Key DRC Resources

To support more meaningful use of NSCH data, the DRC also recently released two new guidance documents that help users interpret findings and conduct subgroup analyses.

1. Making Sense of the Data: How to Use and Interpret National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) Data

2. Using the Data Resource Center to Look at Subgroups to Assess Variations Across Groups vs. Distribution Across Groups

The DRC is here to support your use of NSCH data for impact and change in research, policy, and practice. In addition to the interactive data query, visit the DRC NSCH Overview page to learn more about the survey and explore numerous NSCH resources:

Additional resources are available at HRSA MCHB’s NSCH webpage, including NSCH Data Briefs. NSCH public use data files can be found on the U.S. Census Bureau’s NSCH page.

Have questions about the NSCH?

If you have any technical assistance (TA) requests, please visit our “Ask Us a Question” page. There you will find common TA questions and responses. If you still cannot find what you need, submit your question through a TA request form and we will get back to you as soon as possible!

Coming Soon!

Be on the lookout for the Across-State Comparison Tables and Across-State Comparison U.S. Maps with National Performance Measures, National Outcome Measures, and Standardized Measures, and downloadable the 2024 NSCH datasets and codebooks coming this spring.

This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant number U59MC27866, National Maternal and Child Health Data Resource Initiative, $4.5M. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position of or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

The CAHMI is a center within the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.