Objectives

Problem

The opioid crisis, and its underlying issues of substance use and addiction, impact every citizen in the Commonwealth of Virginia, destroying families, increasing crime, adding to incarceration rates, decreasing Virginia’s economic productivity, and taking critical resources away from other important State agency services.

Solution

The Framework for Addiction Analysis and Community Transformation (FAACT) project, spearheaded by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) brings national, commonwealth, and local data resources to bear in addressing Substance Use Disorder (SUD) and addiction in Virginia. FAACT was created from the belief that the best people to respond to the opioid epidemic are those who are on the front lines witnessing the effects of drug abuse within their own communities.

 The program establishes a data governance framework and data sharing agreements among several government and community agencies. A vigorous amount of work was put into addressing legal and regulatory issues related to the sensitivities around data sharing. This trust was fundamental to establishing a data governance framework that could be used for opioid crisis response and other future use cases.

After signing the data trust agreement, agencies securely collect information from various sources and store it one repository. The system documents and catalogs the data, anonymizes sensitive information, and allows non-information technology professionals to create customized dashboards and analytical applications. It provides actionable intelligence so users can make evidence-based decisions.