Data dashboards are powerful tools that can support community engagement and decision-making by providing public health surveillance and early detection of emerging health threats, as well as facilitating efficient resource allocation. These dashboards serve as a transparent and customizable platform for communicating critical information in easy-to-understand, interactive formats (e.g., charts, graphs, maps) to policymakers, stakeholders, community members, and the public. Many states and jurisdictions across the country have utilized data dashboards to identify trends, evaluate the effectiveness of existing policies, and develop targeted interventions to quell the ongoing substance use disorder and overdose crisis.
As part of the HEALing Communities Study (HCS), a multi-site research study that tested the impact of an integrated set of evidence-based practices to reduce fatal opioid-related overdose, researchers from four participating research sites (New York, Massachusetts, Kentucky, and Ohio) developed community dashboards to support data-driven decision-making.
The webinar aimed to show how data dashboards can facilitate evidence-based decision-making by providing insights into effective approaches, gaps in substance use disorder services, and opportunities to address challenges within communities. Presenters provided a step-by-step walkthrough of the undertakings to develop the HCS dashboards, including the process of accessing, displaying, and explaining data; co-designing dashboards with state and local partners; implementing and using dashboards in the community; and best practices for using and sustaining them. They also shared publicly available tools that communities can use to develop their own dashboards, as well as a set of standardized measures used by HCS for data collection.
Speakers:
Jennifer Villani, PhD, MPH, Associate Director of the HEALing Communities Study at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
Naleef Fareed, PhD, Associate Professor at The Ohio State University College of Medicine
Daniel Harris, PhD, Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy
Elwin Wu, PhD, Professor of Social Work at Columbia University
Peter Balvanz, MPH, Associate Director of Informatics at the Boston Medical Center
Jessica Hulsey, Executive Director, Addiction Policy Forum
This webinar was sponsored by HEAL Connections, an initiative funded by the NIH HEAL Initiative and in partnership with the HEALing Communities Study and Addiction Policy Forum.
The HEALing Communities Study (HCS) includes scientists from the nation’s leading health agencies and four major academic institutions to investigate how tools for preventing and treating opioid misuse and opioid use disorder are most effective at the local level. The robust initiative includes 67 communities across four states. HCS is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in partnership with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and is part of the Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative, a bold effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid crisis.
HCS Data Dashboards
Massachusetts HCS public dashboard: massopioiddata.com
Ohio Integrated Behavior Health dashboard: data.ohio.gov/ohio-ibhd
Ohio HCS Tableau workbook and synthetic data: OhioHCSTableauWorkbook
New York HCS public dashboard: NY HCS dashboard
Kentucky dashboard github repo: KY HCS dashboard GitHub repo
Other Helpful Resources
HCS Journal Publications
Community dashboards to support data-informed decision-making in the HEALing communities study (Wu et al., 2020)
Operationalizing and selecting outcome measures for the HEALing Communities Study (Slavova et al., 2020)
Massachusetts Prevalence of Opioid Use Disorder Estimation Revisited: Comparing a Bayesian Approach to Standard Capture-Recapture Methods (Wang et al., 2023)
Opioid Use Disorder Among Ohio's Medicaid Population: Prevalence Estimates From 19 Counties Using a Multiplier Method (Doogan et al., 2022)
The prevalence of opioid use disorder in Kentucky's counties: A two-year multi-sample capture-recapture analysis (Thompson et al., 2023)
What is the prevalence of and trend in opioid use disorder in the United States from 2010 to 2019? Using multiplier approaches to estimate prevalence for an unknown population size (Keyes et al., 2022)