National Survey of Children's Health, 2003

The National Survey of Children's Health, funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), is a module of the State and Local Area Integrated Telephone Survey (SLAITS) that is conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The survey was conducted to assess how well each state, and the nation as a whole, met MCHB's strategic plan goals and national performance measures. These goals include providing national leadership for maternal and child health, promoting an environment that supports maternal and child health, eliminating health barriers and disparities, improving the health infrastructure and systems of care, assuring quality care, working with states and communities to plan and implement policies and programs to improve the social, emotional, and physical environment, and acquiring the best available evidence to develop and promote guidelines and practices to assure a social, emotional, and physical environment that supports the health and well-being of women and children. The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) was designed to produce national- and state-specific prevalence estimates for a variety of physical, emotional, and behavioral health indicators and measures of children's experiences with the health care system. Respondents were asked an extensive battery of questions about the family, including parental health, stress and coping behaviors, family activities, and parental concerns about their children, as well as their perceptions of the child's neighborhood. Demographic information includes race, gender, family income, and education level.