Texas is taking serious steps toward using predictive data analytics, or “big data,” to prevent child deaths due to abuse and neglect.
Not only are state officials finally catching on that child maltreatment is a public health issue, there are three new state-led efforts to curtail child deaths and maltreatment by using data to pinpoint specific warning signs at different community levels.
Texas is following in the footsteps of California, which has already begun to use big data to reform child welfare and is slowly integrating groundbreaking research that links childhood trauma and negative experiences to a greater likelihood of adult social and health problems.
Two state agencies, the Department of Family and Protective Services and the Department of State Health Services, teamed up last April to analyze three years’ data from each department. In early March, the departments released a report of their findings and indicated they have plans in the works to target prevention, intervention and education programs in the state’s most needed areas.
The report, named the “Strategic Plan to Reduce Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities,” compared child abuse fatality data with public health information between 2010 and 2012. Researchers looked at birth and death certificates and matched those to other factors like parental income, benefits, level of parental education, crime, and health.
“This report … is a milestone for child abuse prevention in Texas,” said Sasha Rasco, director of prevention and early intervention for the Department of Family and Protective Services, in a department press release. “Building upon past research connecting adverse childhood experiences to health outcomes in adults, we finally can see child abuse as a public health issue, and a community problem that can only be attacked with community solutions.”
Read the full story at Chronicle of Social Change.