DDAP Prevention Needs Assessment Data Books

The Pennsylvania State Data Center (PaSDC), in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs (DDAP), leveraged existing data indicators from their Prevention Data Dashboards work to create resource files for each Single County Authority (SCA) in Pennsylvania. The Prevention Data Books included localized and more detailed data focused on a particular SCA’s county or region in an accessible spreadsheet format. Staff from DDAP used these resources to help train SCAs in performing their own needs assessments.

As noted, the project was an extension of the previous work with DDAP to collect, analyze, and visualize indicators related to substance use, problem gambling, and prevention using Esri ArcGIS Hub, StoryMaps, and Tableau to create data-driven narratives. This work utilized the R programming language to create 66 unique Excel files with data from the Pennsylvania Youth Survey (PAYS), the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and American Community Survey (ACS) among others to help SCAs identify important trends in their communities.