The Early Childhood Atlas is an integrated,
spatially enabled database that includes early childhood
services data from 16 states and demographic, education and
health care data from all 50 states. The atlas team performs
a wide variety of research tasks in support of the
Mississippi State University (MSU) Early Childhood
Institute.
The institute’s National Center for Rural
Early Childhood Learning Initiative developed the Early
Childhood Atlas in 2004 as an interstate university research
collaboration. The institute used the atlas in damage
assessments and restoration planning for the early childhood
sector in the Hurricane Katrina disaster area. The Center
for Applied Research and Environmental Systems (CARES), a
research program of the University of Missouri, has
collaborated with ECI on the atlas from the beginning,
performing geographic information system (GIS) research
tasks as a sub-contractor. This relationship began because
CARES’ institutional home, the Rural Policy Research
Institute at the University of Missouri, offered unique
expertise in analyzing gaps in services in rural America.
ECI maintained this relationship with CARES because of the
center’s rapid response to ECI’s need, in the immediate
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for GIS support for damage
assessments and restoration planning for the early childhood
sector in the disaster area.
Elizabeth F. Shores,
M.A.P.H., directs the Early Childhood Atlas.
