IECOHD makes scholarly contributions on the conditions, resources, and social policies that matter for equity in child opportunity and healthy development. We publish those findings in academic journals and in scholarly reports not only to advance the understanding of these topics, but also to push the fields of social policy, public health, and social work to center equity.

A selected list of our scholarly publications is below. These articles and reports are only one way in which we disseminate our research findings. We partner with policymakers, policy administrators, organizations, funders, and advocates, as well as other researchers, around our common mission to advance equity in child opportunity and well-being. We also publish user-friendly blogs and data visualizations on diversitydatakids.org.

Experiences of Child Care Providers Serving Subsidy-Receiving Children Involved in the Child Protective Services System: Implications for Equitable Access

Authors: Yoonsook Ha, Roberto S. Salva, Juliann H. Nicholson, Kate Giapponi Schneider, Pamela Joshi, Mary E. Collins, Paripoorna Baxi

Publication: Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Description:Expanding access to quality early childhood care and education (ECE) for children involved in the child protective services system depends on ECE providers’ willingness and capacity to serve them, yet no studies have examined ECE providers’ experiences in this context. This study analyzes focus group data from 84 diverse ECE providers across Massachusetts who provide subsidized childcare to CPS-involved children, aiming to understand providers’ experiences and identify resources and supports needed to meet these children’s needs. 

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Confronting the Role of Structural Racism in Child Neighborhood Opportunity and Child Health

Authors: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Clemens Noelke, Leah Shafer

Publication: Academic Pediatrics

Description: As the field of medicine recognizes racism as a key determinant of child health, the challenge remains on how to confront structural racism to support health equity. In a supplement of Academic Pediatrics titled Racism and Pediatrics, we explain how the Child Opportunity Index is supporting medical providers, researchers, organizations, and policy systems in understanding and addressing the neighborhood-level factors that perpetuate racial/ethnic inequities in health.

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The State of Racial/Ethnic Equity in Children’s Neighborhood Opportunity: First Findings from the Child Opportunity Index 3.0

Authors: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Nancy McArdle, Leah Shafer, Clemens Noelke

Publication: diversitydatakids.org Data-for-Equity Research Report

Description: First findings from the Child Opportunity Index 3.0 reveal substantial inequities in neighborhood opportunity across and within the 100 largest metro areas, with clear patterns of inequity by race and ethnicity. Overall, Black children are 7.6 times and Hispanic children 7.2 times more likely to live in very low-opportunity neighborhoods than White children. Child opportunity is also associated with outcomes including life expectancy and socioeconomic mobility.

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In Conversation with Equity: Qualitatively Engaging Quantitative Data for Equitable Social Impact

Authors: Robert W. Ressler, Michelle Weiner, Dolores Acevedo-Garcia

Publication: Public Integrity

Description: Under what circumstances do organizations use data from projects like the Child Opportunity Index to advance racial/ethnic equity? How can data producers like diversitydatakids.org work with health care organizations to facilitate equity-focused analysis and applications? Our article in Public Integrity shows how qualitative methods can encourage the use of quantitative data for social impact.

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Improving the Infrastructure for Neighborhood Indices to Advance Health Equity

Authors: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Clemens Noelke, Robert W. Ressler, Leah Shafer

Publication: Health Affairs Forefront

Description: If neighborhood metrics continue to be central to policy and research goals, then these indices need to be continually maintained, refined, updated, funded and validated. In our blog in Health Affairs Forefront, we offer a framework for assessing neighborhood indices’ conceptualization, technical soundness and utility—all to ensure that researchers and practitioners have the best tools to advance equity.

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Neighborhood Opportunity and Mortality Among Children and Adults in Their Households

Authors: Natalie Slopen, Candace Cosgrove, Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Mark Hatzenbuehler, Jack Shonkoff, Clemens Noelke

Publication: Pediatrics

Description: Previous research has used the Child Opportunity Index to demonstrate connections between neighborhood opportunity and life expectancy, deaths from gun violence, acute care usage, and much more. This study adds new evidence that neighborhood conditions and resources are associated with children’s chances of dying or losing a caregiver. These findings should be an urgent call to action for health professionals, policymakers, advocates, and anyone who cares about child health to reduce child mortality and inequities in mortality between neighborhoods.

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Families’ Job Characteristics and Economic Self-Sufficiency: Differences by Income, Race-Ethnicity, and Nativity

Authors: Pamela Joshi, Abigail N. Walters, Clemens Noelke, Dolores Acevedo-Garcia

Publication: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Description: Jobs should provide families with the lion’s share of resources they need to care for their children. But in reality, how do earnings from parents’ full-time work stack up against the costs of families’ basic needs — essentials like housing, food, medical care, and child care? We find that in the years leading up to the pandemic, more than one-third of families who worked full time year-round did not earn enough to cover basic needs like housing, food and child care. The situation is especially dire for low-income families with children. More than three-quarters (77%) of those who worked full time did not earn enough to cover a basic family needs budget.

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Connecting Past to Present: Examining Different Approaches to Linking Historical Redlining to Present Day Health Inequities

Authors: Clemens Noelke, Michael Outrich, Mikyung Baek, Jason Reece, Theresa Osypuk, Nancy McArdle, Robert Ressler, Dolores Acevedo-Garcia

Publication: PLoS ONE

Description: Redlining is receiving long-overdue attention for its role in perpetuating systemic racial inequities. Making precise comparisons between lines drawn in the 1930s and today’s neighborhood boundaries is complicated, but necessary to understand how the distribution of opportunity today stems from racist policy decisions of the past. Alongside our dataset that uses a novel method to produce a robust mapping of redlining grades onto today’s neighborhoods, our article in PLOS ONE compares how well different approaches to classifying present-day neighborhoods by 1930s ratings predict current health and socioeconomic outcomes, and it shares our own predictively optimal method.

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Including Children in Immigrant Families in Policy Approaches to Reduce Child Poverty

Authors: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Pamela Joshi, Emily Ruskin, Abigail N. Walters, Nomi Sofer, Carlos Guevara

Publication: Academic Pediatrics 

Description: More than 90% of children in immigrant families are U.S. citizens, and they are more likely to live in poverty than children in nonimmigrant families. In collaboration with UnidosUS, our article in Academic Pediatrics shows how these children in immigrant families are excluded from critical safety net programs — with disproportionate negative effects on Hispanic children, limiting these programs’ ability to reduce child poverty.

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Racial and Ethnic Inequities in Children’s Neighborhoods: Evidence from The New Child Opportunity Index 2.0

Authors: Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Clemens Noelke, Nancy McArdle, Nomi Sofer, Erin Hardy, Michelle Weiner, Mikyung Baek, Nick Huntington, Rebecca Huber, Jason Reece

Publication: Health Affairs

Description: Neighborhoods influence children’s health, so it is important to have measures of children’s neighborhood environments. Using the Child Opportunity Index 2.0, a composite metric of the neighborhood conditions that children experience, we present new evidence of vast geographic and racial/ethnic inequities in neighborhood conditions in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S.

Read the article.

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