Where children live, learn, play, and work can influence their health. This is especially pertinent at the community or neighborhood level, but state level information can be informative as well.
Multiple factors can contribute to a state’s environmental health profile, including: regional, geographic, and meteorological conditions; population sizes; economies; major industries; and state and local policies and regulations.
Federal policy, regulations, and support also influence states’ environmental health, and the health of children living in them. CEHN has developed fact sheets that include indicators of environmental hazards, environmental exposure, and child health and development to provide an understanding of children’s environmental health at the state level.
State spotlights highlight the stories of leaders, people, and organizations working to improve children’s environmental health, and the strategies they’re using to create positive change at the state level.
Please note: Spotlights are an ongoing project. If you notice your state is missing or needs an update and you’d like to be considered for a spotlight, please send us an email!
When we started looking for ways to asses children’s environmental health at the state level, CEHN found that robust, valid, and regularly updated state data– comparable across most states–were not readily accessible. We’ve selected key children’s environmental health indicators (CEHIs) to assess the magnitude or extent of environmental hazards, environmental exposures, or children’s health outcomes across all states.
You can learn more about CEHIs and how we selected them in our report Children’s Environmental Health Indicators: A Summary and Assessment.
Briefly, we selected CEHIs based on the following criteria:
Each headline indicator should be a clear, understandable indicator of children’s environmental health, with broad relevance for a range of audiences at the state level – with relevance to the national level.
The indicators as a package should provide a representative picture of children’s health and relation to the environment.
Each indicator should be calculated using an agreed-upon (and published) method and accessible and verifiable data.
Each indicator should be calculated regularly (at least biennially), with a short lag between the end of the period and publication of the data.
The available data needed for the indicator must be sufficiently robust, reliable and valid.
Indicators must be comparable across all or very nearly all 50 U.S. states.
States need adequate funding and capacity to collect, and to make accessible, reliable CEHI data in order to set goals and track progress towards improving children’s health.
© Children’s Environmental Health Network, 2025
