The Children's Futures initiative was designed to enhance the health and well-being of children from birth to age 3 in Trenton, New Jersey through 3 major strategies: (1) Improving access to prenatal care and strengthening effective parenting; (2) Improving the quality of child care; and (3) Strengthening and sustaining positive involvement of fathers in their children's lives. The data collection efforts included a baseline survey of the Trenton community conducted in 2002 and surveys of Trenton child care providers conducted in 2003, 2004, and 2005. In addition, births records for Trenton, Camden, and Newark were obtained from the New Jersey State Department of Health. The data from the 2002 community survey represents a baseline picture of the primary caregivers of children ages 0-5 in Trenton on a set of outcomes, among them parenting behaviors and strategies that the initiative hoped to influence. Like the baseline community survey, the follow-up surveys interviewed the primary caregivers of children aged 0-5 in Trenton households about child and parental health, parenting practices, fathers' involvement in their children's lives, health insurance and health care utilization, attendance at parenting groups or classes, and utilization of child care. In addition, the surveys collected information on country of birth, year of immigration, race, Hispanic origin, education, employment status, alcohol use, earnings, and household income. The community surveys followed a repeated cross-sectional design. That is, individual community residents were not followed over time; rather, at each wave of data collection, a new sample of respondents were interviewed. This followups are Evaluation of Children's Futures: Improving Health and Development Outcomes for Children in Trenton, New Jersey: Second Community Survey, 2008 and Third Community Survey, 2010
