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The Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy (ICYFP) at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management launched a new online data and analysis tool at diversitydatakids.org, providing unprecedented insight into well-being and equity among the ever-more diverse child population in the United States. On diversitydatakids.org, users can create customized profiles, rankings and maps that make data about vulnerable children visual and digestible. For the America Healing community, this new tool can help make the case for the important efforts led by communities across the country. Site visitors can drill down into specific structural factors that influence racial disparities among children, from health, to housing to education.
For many local organizations, being able to examine data for their own and other similarly sized metropolitan areas provides valuable information. But diversitydatakids.org takes local data one step further, offering data at the neighborhood level to provide pinpoint views of the often nuanced inequities present among children of varying racial and ethnic groups. According to Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, director of ICYFP and principal investigator of the diversitydatakids.org project, this new resource will help users identify and quantify disparities in their own communities. “Our future hinges on our ability to ensure equitable opportunities for children across all racial and ethnic groups to lead healthy, productive lives,” she said. “We hope that our data will equip users to become more informed advocates for all children and especially for vulnerable children.”
The U.S. philanthropic community is increasingly focused on data that promotes child advocacy through a racial equity lens – an approach that has been at the core of our strategies for America Healing since it launched in 2010. Previously, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation supported the development of diversitydatakids.org’s parent project, diversitydata.org, created in 2007.