Celebrating One Year Anniversary of IECAM Data Hub
Published:
June 11, 2026
Celebrate the first anniversary of the IECAM Data Hub and learn how stakeholders across Illinois use early childhood data to support their work and communities.
It has been one year since we launched the Illinois Early Childhood Data Hub, a comprehensive interactive tool designed for anyone working in early childhood who uses early childhood data to inform their work and guide their decision-making.
Over the past year, we have been excited to hear so many successful stories from stakeholders across Illinois who have used the Data Hub for their grant applications and to guide planning for their programs.
Over the past year, we have been excited to hear so many successful stories from stakeholders across Illinois who have used the Data Hub for their grant applications and to guide planning for their programs.
As we celebrate this important milestone, we want to share a few ways the Data Hub can help communities better understand the needs of young children and families across the state.
If you are interested in learning more about the background and development of the Illinois Early Childhood Data Hub, we invite you to watch our original launch announcement:
Providing Local Snapshots
Are you interested in understanding the early childhood needs and trends in your community?
Through the Data Hub, users can find early childhood data by county, Birth to Five Illinois region, school district, and Chicago community area as well as the state overall. For example, users can
- explore demographic information such as age, poverty, race/ethnicity, and home language for children and families;
- view how many children by age are being served in early intervention and the Child Care Assistance Program; and
- find the number of program sites and capacity of other early childhood programs such as Preschool for All, Head Start, child care, and home visiting.
Making Complex Early Childhood Data Easy to Understand Through Multiple Methods
Throughout the year, the IECAM team has strived to make sure users can access early childhood data in a meaningful and effective way. For example, users can
- explore site-level data through an interactive map on our Details page where you can zoom in to the street level;
- identify trends and patterns through multiyear searches in the Download section;
- use the movable menu (introduced in 2026) to filter and display information relevant to their needs; and
- create datasets to view in tables or download in CSV format.
As we celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Data Hub, we are excited to share that we will be posting more blog posts with updates, data highlights, and examples of how the Data Hub and IECAM’s work can support early childhood communities across Illinois.
We look forward to continuing to make early childhood data more accessible, understandable, and useful for educators, administrators, policymakers, advocates, researchers, and community members. Stay tuned for future updates!
Key Takeaways
- Celebrating the one-year anniversary of Data Hub.
- Users can use the Data Hub to generate local early childhood snapshots.
- Users can easily find, understand, and download data relevant to their work through the Data Hub
- IECAM will continue sharing updates, resources, and examples of how to use IECAM tools in your work through future blog posts.
Author
Hsiu-Wen Yang, PhD. Research Scientist, Illinois Early Childhood Asset Map, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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