CHILD Data System

Mural of woman surrounded by flowers

System Details

The Poverty Center’s Child and Household Integrated Longitudinal Data (CHILD) system is a comprehensive integrated data system used to carry out research and evaluation in order to improve child health and wellbeing in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Our system is nationally recognized as among the oldest and most comprehensive in the country and includes continually updated administrative data from 1989 to the present from over 35 administrative systems on more than 750,000 children, for a total of over 200 million records in the system. Funding for CHILD comes via grants from Cuyahoga County, the City of Cleveland, and other partners. The CHILD system is used by Poverty Center researchers for research and evaluation of dozens of projects.

Cuyahoga CHILD System FAQs 

Data Privacy

The records imported into the CHILD Data System contain personally identifiable information so that they can be linked across agencies. The records are stored within a secure research environment that meets the highest standards of physical, administrative, and technical controls. No identifiable information is used outside this environment. Only summary statistics and tabulations are removed, and these are carefully checked for the possibility of deductive re-identification before being released.

Ensuring that these data are used appropriately and ethically and that all data are secure are of utmost importance to the Poverty Center.

Leveraging Policy and Evaluation: Integrated Data as a Tool

Presentation by Rob Fischer, Ph.D. at Ohio State University