Are you aware that approximately one-third of all 7th-grade girls in Los Angeles County report what they identify as feelings of depression to the degree that it interrupts their regular activities?
Did you know that nearly one out of every six children in Los Angeles County has been diagnosed with asthma?
Have you heard that an African-American infant is more than twice as likely to die compared to babies from other ethnic groups?
How about this: A good number of homeless individuals are not the lone and broken street folk they might appear to be — approximately 25% come from families with children.
Have you considered, lately, just how much our society has come to accept as normal?
You'll hardly be able to avoid that last question if you take the time to consider the information presented to visitors at kidsdata.org on the Internet. The website is produced by the non-profit Lucile Packard Foundation. It aims to provide a point of reference for anyone — individuals, elected officials, healthcare professionals, social-service providers, and others — who is concerned about the state of affairs among our children.
Much of the information at kidsdata.org is available for the entire state and also on a county-by-county basis. In some instances it can be viewed city-by-city, or by select school districts. In other instances there are demographic breakdowns available, offering clues on trends that could have some root cause in geography, race, culture or economics.
Why take the time to consider all of that?
Because nothing concentrates the mind like money problems. And nothing produces feelings of empathy for those down below like a fear of falling among them — a prospect that has chilled plenty of erstwhile care-free hearts throughout our city, county and state. The landscape still looks plenty rugged — but seeds of community are sprouting among grassroots that have survived a scorching for the past year or two. These tough times of ours' mean that there might never be a better chance to make your voice heard when it comes to shaping the future of your own community.
There's also good reason take the information at kidsdata.org into consideration even if you're not feeling any immediate fright. Some among us who have no pressing cause to fear the economic downturn or the future might nonetheless see enlightened self interest in getting a grip on the information provided by kidsdata.org. There are plenty of troubling trends to consider — perhaps enough to prompt thoughtful individuals to see the potential for greater and broader problems that might come from having so many negative indicators gathering over the children of our state.
Bear in mind that you could hardly wonder about such trends without moving on to thoughts of what might be done about them. That could range from personal charity to voting — or even running for elected office — with a lot of other options in between.
In any case, anyone who wants to begin to go from wondering about these matters to doing something about them will need a comprehensive picture of the problems that our society faces. Many of these problems are inter-related, and a well-intentioned move to fix one could exasperate another if overall context isn't sufficiently considered.
A good set of data will help avoid such pitfalls — and the examples we cited at the start of this message involved children for a reason. That's where so many of our problems start. A failure to address such challenges will leave many of the children of California to grow into a troubled bunch of adults, with solutions ever-more difficult to discover and more expensive to apply.
That's why the Garment & Citizen urges all of our readers to visit and consider the information available at kidsdata.org. A key reason for this recommendation is that the website is strictly informational. It carries no discernible political bias, offering a compendium of vitally important facts in comprehensive and comprehensible fashion. There is no preaching about how you should feel about the facts at hand. You won't feel as though you're being tapped on the shoulder to follow any particular organization's path toward addressing or exploiting the data.
Visit kidsdata.org and you'll be able to get just about as much information as you'll likely find anywhere about the conditions facing the youth of California.
What might be done about the circumstances will be up to you.
More info:
• kidsdata.org
Jerry Sullivan is editor of the L.A. Garment & Citizen.
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