SUD-t Map: A Big Data Digital Platform to Identify and Characterize SUD Treatment Opportunities to Address Health Disparities

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1.a. PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The proposed project will address a preeminent public health challenge that is acute and immediate: developing innovative commercial digital solutions to positively affect fundamental risk factors associated with health disparities and social determinants of health (SDOH) experienced by communities afflicted with substance use disorder (SUD). With an alarming 81,000 overdose deaths recorded in the 12 months ending on May 2020, it is clear that the current national opioid epidemic is being accelerated and worsened by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As these dual health emergencies collide, communities that are negatively impacted by health disparities remain disproportionately at higher risk for substance use disorders. At the same time, ensuring sufficient and equitable access to SUD prevention and treatment services remains a significant challenge, and few if any tools exist to provide actionable business and public health intelligence needed by different SUD stakeholders, including government agencies, corporate employers, and technology companies, about where and what types of prevention and treatment services are needed. In response, this project will conceptualize, develop and pilot test a multimodal digital tool that will create a comprehensive nationwide database of SUD treatment facilities, combined with an analytical health disparities data layer that can enable SUD-related intelligence. The tool will generate actionable insights on where SUD treatment capacity is insufficient and in turn reduce health disparities related to improving access to SUD treatment specific to priority minority populations and underserved communities. The project will use technology approaches in big data, predictive modeling, and custom data visualization and has the following project aims: Milestone 1: Use advanced methods of data mining to identify and collate a national SUD treatment facility database that includes specific community and business characteristics of interest; Milestone 2: Join, integrate, and analyze SUD treatment facility data with existing demographic, economic, social, and health disparity-related data to enable identification of communities at highest risk of health-related SUDs including a specific focus on identifying communities with insufficient treatment access; and Milestone 3: Build a web-hosted MVP data visualization solution to enable actionable public health and business intelligence identifying SUD health disparity treatment access risks and target use of the solution for customer segments including government agencies, corporate employers, and technology companies. This is a critical opportunity to directly address health disparities related to SUD by developing an innovative digital tool that can help ensure sufficient access to prevention and treatment services in communities who have the greatest need.