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Prevention / Treatment
Initiatives : |
April 1999 |
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The design and provision of prevention and
treatment services has matured greatly in recent years, particularly with the growing
emphasis placed by public and private fund sources on the outcomes of such efforts. In
order to demonstrate the efficacy of projects supported by NW HIDTA prevention/treatment
resources, the MIS/Evaluation Initiative, now entering its third year, has brought
expertise from several sources into our evaluation activities. The MIS/Evaluation Initiative links to both the Drug Court development Initiative and the Community Coalition Support Initiative, and is comprised of three integrated components. As Drug Court programs have developed in county jurisdictions within the NW HIDTA region, the participating lead agencies have pieced together revenues to support the programs from numerous funding sources. Frequently, each funding source has had a specific evaluation requirement, often with a format and data set distinctly unique from the others. In the interest of consolidation, standardizing and simplifying this evaluation activity, the NW HIDTA has received approval from each funding source and each program jurisdiction to assume responsibility for evaluating the Drug Court programs. Toward this end, the NW HIDTA has contracted with the University of Washington Alcohol and Drug Abuse Institute (ADAI) to design and conduct the evaluations. The ADAI team, led by Dr. Gary Cox, has begun the process in two phases: a retrospective study of the King County and Pierce County Drug Court programs (collecting and analyzing past outcome data), and a prospective study of the Thurston County and Skagit County programs as well as those in King and Pierce counties (to follow program performance as of January 1999). To date, the first of four program profiles have been drafted, and the retrospective study is expected to be complete in time for the January 2000 session of the Washington State Legislature. In order to facilitate the evaluation of each Drug Court program in the NW HIDTA region, the second component of the Initiative will implement local management information system networks in each Drug Court jurisdiction. Based on a case management software program developed by Computer Applications, Development and Integration (CADI) Inc. these local area networks will allow the treatment agencies serving Drug Court program participants to communicate on-line in real time to the Drug Court program judge in each county Superior Court. The software has been designed to capture every data element required for each funding source, and standardizes the information so as to allow comparisons between Drug Court programs throughout the region. The CADI software additionally includes an interface with the Washington State Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse TARGET system, avoiding the necessity for duplicate data entry at the treatment agencies into two MIS systems. The CADI system is being installed in King, Pierce, Thurston, and Skagit counties this year, and will be introduced into programs in Snohomish, Whatcom and Yakima counties next year. The third component of the Initiative entails an evaluation of the substance abuse prevention projects in each of the seven NW HIDTA counties that receive resources from the Community Coalition Support Initiative. Developmental Research and Programs (DRP) Inc., a firm started by Dr. David Hawkins and Dr. Richard Catalano of the University of Washington Social Development Research Group, has been contracted to design and conduct this evaluation project. Led by Dr. Jack Pollard, this team is collecting date from throughout the region that address risk factors, including school survey data, local crime statistics and other archival data that depict the risk factors for substance abuse in each community within the region. As "profiles" of teach community, identifiable at the census tract level, are developed they will be entered into a geographic imaging software program that will produce a "risk factor map" of the NW HIDTA region. As data is collected and analyzed in subsequent years, changes in the prevalence of specific risk factors can be tracked, associated with particular prevention activities and programs may be enhanced or revised in order to effectively match service strategies with neighborhood characteristics. For additional information about the MIS/Evaluation
Initiative, please contact Steve Freng at 206.394.3603 or sfreng@nw.hidta.org. |
