Developmental impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on young children: a conceptual model for research with integrated administrative data systems.

Heather L Rouse,Emily Berkowitz,Jhonelle Bailey,Matthew F Katz,Mark Needle,Justin T Lane,Sharon Zanti,Rebecca J Bulotsky Shearer,Astrid Pena,Sydney S Idzikowski,Amy Hawn Nelson,Maggie Reeves

doi:10.23889/ijpds.v5i4.1651

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic made its mark on the entire world, upending economies, shifting work and education, and exposing deeply rooted inequities. A particularly vulnerable, yet less studied population includes our youngest children, ages zero to five, whose proximal and distal contexts have been exponentially affected with unknown impacts on health, education, and social-emotional well-being. Integrated administrative data systems could be important tools for understanding these impacts. This article has three aims to guide research on the impacts of COVID-19 for this critical population using integrated data systems (IDS). First, it presents a conceptual data model informed by developmental-ecological theory and epidemiological frameworks to study young children. This data model presents five developmental resilience pathways (i.e. early learning, safe and nurturing families, health, housing, and financial/employment) that include direct and indirect influencers related to COVID-19 impacts and the contexts and community supports that can affect outcomes. Second, the article outlines administrative datasets with relevant indicators that are commonly collected, could be integrated at the individual level, and include relevant linkages between children and families to facilitate research using the conceptual data model. Third, this paper provides specific considerations for research using the conceptual data model that acknowledge the highly-localised political response to COVID-19 in the US. It concludes with a call to action for the population data science community to use and expand IDS capacities to better understand the intermediate and long-term impacts of this pandemic on young children.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic made its mark on the entire world, upending economies, shifting work and education, and exposing deeply rooted inequities
integrated data systems (IDS) have several key ingredients: (1) they include cross-sectoral records of multiple public agencies that may include health and human service systems, education, public housing, and economic development, providing potential access to a comprehensive set of child and family well-being indicators; (2) they can be longitudinal and population-based, facilitating the study of prevalence and patterns of needs, service utilisation, predictors that relate to programme use, and accumulated costs associated with service use; and (3) they potentially have capacity to link children with their caregivers, creating a unique opportunity for intergenerational research and the careful study of mediating and moderating factors associated with developmental outcomes of young children
This paper has provided a conceptual data model for using IDS for COVID-19 impact research on young children

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic made its mark on the entire world, upending economies, shifting work and education, and exposing deeply rooted inequities. IDS have several key ingredients: (1) they include cross-sectoral records of multiple public agencies that may include health and human service systems, education, public housing, and economic development (among others), providing potential access to a comprehensive set of child and family well-being indicators; (2) they can be longitudinal and population-based, facilitating the study of prevalence and patterns of needs, service utilisation, predictors that relate to programme use, and accumulated costs associated with service use; and (3) they potentially have capacity to link children with their caregivers, creating a unique opportunity for intergenerational research and the careful study of mediating and moderating factors associated with developmental outcomes of young children. Studying commonalities and differences across states could reveal important causal mechanisms that underscore how responses directly and indirectly influence child development outcomes

Limitations and challenges

Conclusion

Findings

Ethics Statement