Definition: Estimated percentage of children ages 0-17 with special health care needs, by race/ethnicity (e.g., in 2024, 50.1% of California children with special health care needs were Hispanic/Latino).
Data Source: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, National Survey of Children's Health (Nov. 2025).
Footnote: Race/ethnicity categories are mutually exclusive. Due to changes in methodology, these estimates should not be compared with data from earlier years. Children with special health care needs (CSHCN) have or are at increased risk for a chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional condition and require health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally. These estimates are based on a survey of the population and are subject to both sampling and nonsampling error. The annotation [!] indicates that the margin of error for the estimate is greater than 5 percentage points but less than 10 percentage points. For more information, see https://www.childhealthdata.org/learn-about-the-nsch/NSCH.
