The Data Initiative seeks to investigate data in South Dakota surrounding the health and wellness of children for the purpose of:
- Improving state and local-level tracking and monitoring of children’s well-being data in South Dakota;
- Improving statewide access to timely and relevant data on the well-being of South Dakota children; and
- Increasing state-level data-driven decision making to promote the well-being of South Dakota children.
The State of South Dakota Children’s Well-Being: 2023 Report
What is the purpose of this report?
Safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments are essential to prevent child abuse and neglect and to assure all children reach their full potential. This report uses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Connecting the Dots framework to draw a roadmap for caring adults to align efforts and enhance prevention of youth violence. Connecting the Dots does this by focusing on shared factors across multiple forms of violence that protect individuals against violence (protective factors) and decrease risk of violence (risk factors). This report compares South Dakota to the nation, and where the data is available, differences seen across counties in South Dakota on these shared risk and protective factors. This report contains over 100 indicators of risk and protective factors for South Dakota children.
2023 Data Briefs
The purpose of the data briefs is to provide a brief overview of a subset of the data found in the 2023 report.
2021 Report
The initial Data Initiative was made possible through funding from the South Dakota Department of Education, with the inaugural report released in June 2022. The inaugural report includes:
- A summary of findings collected via an electronic survey on data accessibility, gaps, and needs;
- Findings from a focus group of SD epidemiologists exploring common facilitators and barriers to accessing and sharing children’s health data, data gaps, and issues regarding data sovereignty;
- An overview of databases tracking SD children’s well-being indicators; and
- An overview of the types of indicators being tracked.
