This dataset houses the underlying data for the "Where are Children in Head Start Exposed to Environmental Hazards" feature. We use administrative data from the number of program participants in Head Start programs from the US Department of Health and Human Services. These data represent the total number of reported funded slots for participants in Head Start Programs.

We also use data from various datasets related to environmental justice metrics. These include data exhibited in the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPAs) EJScreen 2.0, which is an environmental justice mapping and screening tool. These data are in turn sourced from the Office of Air and Radiation fusion of model and monitor data and EPA Hazardous Air Pollutants data. We also use data on lead exposure derived using the share of buildings in a community that were built prior to 1960 as a proxy, sourced from the 2017-2021 American Community Survey. Data on paved land area are included from the White House's Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, originally sourced from the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristic Consortium with data analysis provided by the Trust for Public Lands and American Forests. First Street Foundation data on flood risk, wildfire risk, and extreme heat are also included.

First Street Foundation data is licensed through the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This data is for non-business applications only. The data was originally downloaded from AWS. First Street Foundation data comes with multiple variables delineating the risk scores of each indicator between one and ten. We combine variables with risk scores seven through ten into one indicator that is the share of properties with risk scores of seven through ten in a given geography.

For all environmental exposure metrics, we then create two indices with these data across block groups and ZCTAs; one national index, and one index for only areas that have Head Start participants. We then create a combined index between each environmental exposure metric and an index of Head Start reported funded slots with a weighted average, where the environmental metric is weighted three times what the Head Start reported funded slots index is weighted.

Data on the race and ethnicity are retrieved from the 2020 Decennial Census.

For a more detailed methodology, see the technical appendix for this study.