With the authorization of the first COVID-19 vaccine for children age five and older, most kids in the United States are now eligible to be immunized. Recent experience with other vaccines—measles and chickenpox, for example—shows the country is capable of vaccinating kids widely and equitably, but the challenges that have emerged in the effort to vaccinate adults against COVID-19 also demonstrate that success will take planning and hard work. This issue brief, produced for State Health & Value Strategies with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, highlights strategies and tools that have led to prior successful U.S.

​This brief aims to assist state and federal analysts with survey development and/or analysis of existing survey data to generate estimates of health insurance coverage and access to care across racial and ethnic groups and according to nativity and/or immigrant status. The brief presents the collection and classification of survey data for populations defined by race, ethnicity, and nativity/immigrant (REI) status as well as the availability of these data in public use files. We focus in particular on surveys that are conducted by federal agencies and that collect information about health insurance coverage and access to care on an annual or periodic basis for the general population of the United States.