Diversity Supplement for Hammerslag - Rapid Actionable Data for Opioid Response in Kentucky (RADOR-KY)

This project will add a new source of data to RADOR-KY, consisting of statewide data on treatment for opioid use disorder (residential care, medications, and support services), in order to improve the performance of RADOR-KY’s predictive models. KORE is a federally funded program that offers wide-ranging support for harm reduction, treatment, and recovery. KORE distributes more than $36 million in funding to 156 agencies statewide. Agencies use these funds to provide treatment and support services to more than 28,000 individuals per year. Data about the number of individuals served, including demographic information and the types of services provided, are collected by agencies for reporting to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA). SAMHSA funds KORE through the State Opioid Response (SOR) grant program, which provided $1.42 billion in funding to 57 state and territorial grantees in 2020. Although this data stream has the potential to be a valuable asset to RADOR-KY’s surveillance ecosystem, at present there are several drawbacks that make it unsuitable for inclusion. First, the tools used for data reporting vary by agency and so data ingestion is currently a slow and labor-intensive process. Second, there is little standardization in data collection, limiting the interpretability and usefulness of the data. Finally, the data is currently collected on a quarterly basis, making it challenging for stakeholders to use this data for timely decision making.