To develop and maintain a system of data collection and distribution in Eaton County that will allow persuasive demonstration of the needs for substance abuse prevention programs and services in a manner that builds stakeholder investment and community awareness.
Formal agreements are necessary in order to have a comprehensive data collection process. Currently, relationships and personal favors are key to collecting local data. County government policies and procedures need to be in place with formal agreements between partners. Decisions need to be made about which agencies should regularly report data and what data we need from each agency. Each agency should have a contact person who will provide specific data to ECSAAG. Eaton County needs the capacity to collect and utilize data to assess local substance use, incidence and prevalence, risk and protective factors, co-occurring behaviors and consequences of substance abuse and misuse. Additionally, attention needs to be given to the new HIPAA laws and any barriers they present to our data collection.
To date, we have some youth substance abuse and risk behavior data from the Prevention Needs Assessment Survey from three districts in Eaton County, as well as small samples from a few private and charter schools. More participation of Eaton County youth is needed in order to adequately plan prevention services in Eaton County. The county data we currently use to plan substance abuse prevention services is from a county-wide SEARCH asset survey from 2002. When we were attempting to secure participation in the Prevention Needs Assessment Survey this year, several districts were reluctant to participate because of the numerous requests from different state departments requesting students’ participation in surveys. Administrators, educators, and students experience the pressure of multiple requests to complete multiple surveys and subsequent loss of instructional time.
By 2009, Eaton County will have a comprehensive data collection process that relies on local reliable survey measures, as well as archival indicators measuring youth risk and protective factors, substance abuse behaviors among youth and other prioritized and underserved populations and an assessment of the level and reach of substance abuse prevention services in Eaton County.
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