Objectives: This report presents statistics from the 2000 National Health Interview Survey on selected health measures for children under 18 years of age, classified by sex, age, race, Hispanic origin, family structure, parent's education, family income, poverty status, health insurance coverage, residence, region, and health status. The topics covered are asthma, allergies, learning disability, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), prescription medication, respondent-assessed health status, school-loss days, usual place of health care, time since last contact with a health care professional, unmet dental need, time since last dental contact, and selected measures of health care access.
Source of data: The NHIS is a multistage probability sample survey conducted annually by interviewers of the U.S. Census Bureau for the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is representative of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States. Data are collected during face-to-face interviews with adults present at the interview. Information about children is collected for one randomly selected child per family in face-to-face interviews with an adult proxy respondent familiar with the child's health.
Selected highlights: In 2000 most U.S. children under 18 years of age enjoyed excellent or very good health (83%). However, 12% had no health insurance coverage, and 6% had no usual place of health care. Twelve percent of children had ever been diagnosed with asthma. Eight percent of children 3-17 years of age had a learning disability, and 7% of children in this age group had ADHD. Lastly, 11% of children in single-mother families had two or more visits to an emergency room in the past year compared with 6% in two-parent families.