We hope that you have been using the KIDS COUNT Data Center to see how the children in your county and state are faring on hundreds of indicators of child well-being. If you have used the Data Center, then you know that it not only gives you the opportunity to view data for a wide range of indicators of economic security, education, health, safety and risky behaviors, but it also gives you the ability to rank, map, graph, and download the data.

The Data Center is already an excellent tool that allows us to share and routinely update a large quantity of data, but the Annie E. Casey Foundation is working to make it even better! They will be unveiling a new version of the Data Center on June 24, 2013 when they release the 2013 National KIDS COUNT Data Book.

In an effort to make the Data Center more user-friendly, the biggest change is that you will no longer have to go to one area of the site to view all of the data that the Foundation posts at the national and state level, and a different area of the site to view all of the data that Kentucky Youth Advocates posts for Kentucky’s counties and school districts.

Since it will take all of us some practice to get used to navigating the new site, I will be conducting a webinar about the new Data Center on July 16th at 2:00pm ET. This webinar is part of the upcoming Go to the Source! webinar series organized by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. Register for this FREE webinar here.