Percent of Children with Special Health Care Needs
preexisting, pre-existing conditions
This data is presented as an interactive tool that allows users to: filter by timeframe/year, select specific data columns (distributions), filter by state or geography, and view the data as a table, map, or trend chart.
2024
Location Percent of Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN)
United States 0.27774 Alabama 0.28793 Alaska 0.25729 Arizona 0.27615 Arkansas 0.27339 California 0.22804 Colorado 0.27126 Connecticut 0.25954 Delaware 0.26510 District of Columbia 0.32014 Florida 0.23499 Georgia 0.27795 Hawaii 0.22386 Idaho 0.22856 Illinois 0.28682 Indiana 0.28576 Iowa 0.29518 Kansas 0.30388 Kentucky 0.33727 Louisiana 0.32375 Maine 0.29988 Maryland 0.24850 Massachusetts 0.28638 Michigan 0.30469 Minnesota 0.26165 Mississippi 0.29419 Missouri 0.31035 Montana 0.28871 Nebraska 0.23135 Nevada 0.25779 New Hampshire 0.29318 New Jersey 0.26959 New Mexico 0.26230 New York 0.29848 North Carolina 0.27750 North Dakota 0.27404 Ohio 0.28008 Oklahoma 0.30900 Oregon 0.31683 Pennsylvania 0.31969 Rhode Island 0.28252 South Carolina 0.29656 South Dakota 0.29455 Tennessee 0.27389 Texas 0.29861 Utah 0.30347 Vermont 0.28435 Virginia 0.27526 Washington 0.29145 West Virginia 0.30476 Wisconsin 0.25818 Wyoming 0.29938
Notes
The table shows the share of children ages 0-17 who meet the expanded special health care needs criteria.
All information about children's health conditions from the National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) is based on parent recollection and is not independently verified.
The NSCH uses the Children with Special Health Care Needs (CSHCN) Screener to identify children with special health care needs. The Screener is a five item, parent-reported tool designed to reflect the federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s consequences-based definition of children with special health care needs. More information about CSHCN and the CSHCN Screener can be obtained on the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative’s website .
The children who meet the expanded special health care needs criteria measure include those identified by the Screener and/or children with at least one of the 22 health conditions asked about in the survey AND at least one of the 10 functional difficulties asked about in NSCH.
For information on children with special health care needs and Medicaid, see 5 Key Facts About Children with Special Health Care Needs and Medicaid .
Missing values due to non-response or a “don’t know” response are not included in the denominator for calculation of prevalence estimates and weighted population counts. In the majority of cases, the proportion of missing values is less than 2%.
Sources
KFF analysis of 2024 National Survey of Children's Health .