By: Santa Fe Data Team

​According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), early childhood “is defined as the period from birth to eight years old, is a time of remarkable growth with brain development at its peak. During this stage, children are highly influenced by the environment and the people that surround them.” With this in mind, it is essential that babies are born healthy, and that children are healthy, safe, and nurtured. Since that definition extends to some school-age children as well, educational development is also a key to lifelong wellbeing.
 
The World Health Organization (WHO) has found that regular contact with a doctor, nurse, or midwife during pregnancy allows women to receive services vital to their health and that of their future children. The WHO recommends a minimum of eight prenatal care contacts (visits) to reduce issues such as mortality during pregnancy, during birth, and immediately after birth, as well as to improve women’s experience of care.  
 
According to data gathered from the New Mexico Department of Health (Citation: New Mexico Department of Health, Indicator-Based Information System for Public Health Web site: http://ibis.health.state.nm.us), the percentage of women in Santa Fe County who received prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy has slowly decreased from 75% in 2013 to 66% in 2017 (the latest year available for reporting). This trend falls behind the US national averages (74% in 2013 to 77% in 2017) but remains slightly higher than statewide averages (63% in 2013 compared to 64% in 2017).
 
Another measure that is used to determine the relative health of a community’s babies is whether or not a baby is born at a low birth weight. According to the WHO’s definition, low birth weight babies are defined as a child whose birth weight is lower than 2500 grams, or less than 5.5 pounds. In an article entitled “Risk factors of low birth weight and effect of them on growth pattern of children up to sixth months of life: A cross-sectional study” published in the Journal of Education and Health Promotion (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456878/) researchers note that low birth weight is responsible for 70% of newborns’ mortality, especially in developing countries. Further, low birth weight is also responsible for increased risk of infections, hematological and nutritional diseases, and can result in disability.
 
The article continues: “There are several causing factors for [low birth weight, abbreviated as LBW]: Nutritional status and pattern of weight gaining on mother during pregnancy, history of obstetric complications […], chronic underlying diseases in mother, alcohol use and smoking. Other factors are prenatal care, hemoglobin (Hb) and hematocrit (Hct) level of mother during pregnancy, socioeconomic situation, mother's activity during pregnancy and demographic factors (age, weight,[etc.]) and so on.” Therefore, ensuring that babies start out life healthy means that is important to work towards making sure that babies are born at a healthy weight.

In Santa Fe County, some demographic populations are more prone than others to have low birth weight babies. As the article mentioned, other external factors – such as socioeconomic status – are in play as well, and can affect some demographic populations in a disproportionate manner. All of these factors combined make some of Santa Fe’s most vulnerable populations at risk for low birth weight babies.

One place where the community of Santa Fe has made progress is in the category of early childhood education. Between 2013 and 2017, the percentage of three- and four-year-olds enrolled in preschool has gone from 43.2% to 66.4%. This enrollment rate represents a higher improvement rate, as well as greater enrollment rate to begin with, than the state of New Mexico as a whole (39.8% to 44.1% in the same time period).
 
Likewise, Santa Fe has a greater proportion of pre-school children who are ready for Kindergarten (as assessed by the New Mexico Public Education Department’s Early Childhood Observation Tool) than their counterparts statewide. In school year 2013-14, 54.4% of Santa Fe’s preschoolers evaluated were ready for Kindergarten; in school year 2017-18, that percentage rose to 87.9%. This compares favorably to New Mexico as a whole (51% in 2013-14 to 62% in 2017-18).

By: Santa Fe Data Team
​
​As a part of the redesign of the Santa Fe Birth-to-Career website (opportunitysantafe.org), we are starting a new blog. The first few entries in this blog will give a high-level view of where we are versus where we were in 2015. It would be difficult to simply say, “we’re doing better”, “we’re doing worse”, or “we’re about the same” without some sort of context; therefore, over the next few weeks, we’ll be presenting a few highlights regarding progress we as a community have made in making Santa Fe a safe and healthy place for kids to grow up.
 
In a 1990 speech to the students of a Boston-area high school, Nelson Mandela said that “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” We believe that a good education can make all the difference in the world to an individual person; therefore, several of the metrics that the Data Team track relate to education. How are students in the public school system faring now when compared to students in the school system in 2015? How are students attending our institutions of higher education in Santa Fe faring?
 
There are other measures that can give some context as to the past and current conditions of the community. For example, what does the employment market in Santa Fe look like? In what sector or sectors are the high-wage jobs? How many disconnected youth – young people ages 16-24 who are not employed and not in school – are in Santa Fe? How large a role does homelessness play in this community?
 
The purpose of tracking these metrics is to help everyone make the best decisions on how to tackle the issues our community faces by using the information available to us. This process is called “data-informed decision making”. The Santa Fe B2C Data Team gathers data from multiple sources, including the New Mexico Department of Health, the US Census Bureau, New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department, New Mexico Public Education Department, New Mexico Higher Education Department, and other trustworthy governmental and non-governmental entities. By utilizing data available to us, we aim to help others understand how these different dimensions influence what’s going on around us, and, if possible, identify how we can help make things better for our community.