Why citizen science is now essential for official statistics

The termination in February 2025 of the Demographic and Health Surveys, a critical source of data on population, health, HIV, and nutrition in over 90 countries, supported by the United States Agency for International Development, constitutes a crisis for official statistics. This is particularly true for low- and middle-income countries that lack their own survey infrastructure 1. At a national level, in the United States, proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency by the current administration further threaten the capacity to monitor and achieve environmental sustainability and implement the SDGs 2, 3. Citizen science—data collected through voluntary public contributions—now can and must step up to fill the gap and play a more central role in official statistics.