Idaho FY24 SJSP

The Idaho Statistical Analysis Center (ISAC) requests funds to collect, analyze and disseminate state administrative data on substance use in Idaho. ISAC will partner with the Idaho Office of Drug Policy (ODP) to inform the analysis, which will examine available data from member agencies of the State Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup (SEOW). This project will build on ISAC’s FY 2022 SJS Core Capacity-Building Project, through which ISAC helped the SEOW establish a workgroup-specific database that includes data from SEOW members, as well as build a public-facing data dashboard for analyzing and disseminating that data. ISAC also evaluated data quality and made recommendations for improvement. This project will allow ISAC to help the SEOW address a key recommendation from that project: move away from a “use and consequences” framework for analyzing substance use data and implement a public health approach that places more emphasis on risk and protective factors that influence substance use rates. ISAC aims to meet three key goals: (1) conduct a thorough review of the literature and current best practices to identify the specific data points needed to move the SEOW away from a “use and consequences” framework to a public health approach, which will bring the SEOW into alignment with current best practices; (2) establish new data collection and analysis procedures as necessary, as well as collect and analyze the initial round of new data and assess data quality; and (3) continue to build the SEOW’s data sharing capacity by leveraging the dedicated SEOW database. Findings will culminate in two deliverables: (1) a technical report presenting the new data being collected and the differences between the two analytical frameworks, an assessment of the quality of the new data collected under this approach, and results of statistical analyses conducted with that data; and (2) an updated version of the SEOW Data Dashboard that includes new data not previously included in the dashboard and removes data deemed to be unnecessary and/or irrelevant based on the new public health framework established through this project.