North Sound ACH staff

By Lindsay Knaus, Project Manager

Island Senior Resources presented at this year’s All-In: Data for Community Health National Meeting in Baltimore, MD.  This event is intended to bring data sharing pioneers together to share solutions and accelerate progress toward improved health equity.

Island Senior Resources’ director Chasity Smith’s presentation was titled, “Screening for Social Determinants: What’s in a Tool?”

Island Senior Resources, Island County Human Services and Public Health, Island Senior Resources, and WhidbeyHealth are all participating implementation partners with the ACH, working cooperatively on a number of initiatives related to ACH health improvement strategies. Their work has developed into cross-sector collaboration aimed to address service gaps, barriers, and risk factors in order to improve health equity in Island County.

These partners’ goal is to develop a coordinated referral system and social determinants screening tool. The tool includes demographics and nine core measures covering medical, social, and basic needs. The tool acts as both a screener and referral generator, connecting each person with the right resource.  The organizations aim to identify the needs in their community, better understand the causes, connect people with help, and improve health and well-being.

Implementation began with a local primary care clinic as the pilot site, integrating the screening tool into clinical workflows as of Fall 2019. The pilot will be followed by a formal review and process improvement plan.

Chasity’s presentation provided insights for those looking to develop a coordinated screening and referral system across sectors, using collaboration.  It also provided a rural perspective on this process, from the creation and modification of a screening tool, implementation and timeline considerations, and how small projects can be used to leverage the discussion on multi-sector data sharing in rural communities.

Earlier this month members of our team attended a two-day training with the Pomegranate Center, co-facilitated by Communities of Color Coalition.  The Pomegranate Method provides tools to build collaborative, inclusive, and decisive projects. Our staff learned a process for community planning and decision-making based on productive discussion to drive successful collaboration. Those who attended are eager to use this model in future meetings!

Pomegranate Center believes every community, agency, and company should have teams of trained facilitators who are neutral about what is decided, but fierce about protecting the process. If you would like to learn more, click here to read about training with the Pomegranate Center in Seattle this October.

released January 9, the Snohomish Health District estimates that between 5,000 and 10,000 people in Snohomish County are suffering from opioid use disorder. It’s likely that another 35,000 to 80,000 people are misusing opioids.
 
“We focused on opioid misuse and opioid use disorder because they are considered the two ends of the spectrum for diagnosable patterns that can lead to overdose and death,” said Dr. Mark Beatty, health officer for the Snohomish Health District. “This data will aid the Health District and the Opioid Response Multi-agency Coordination Group with evidence-based decision making, assessment of interventions, and other planning purposes.”

This data is the result of several months of in-depth research and analysis completed by health officer Dr. Mark Beatty. In his report, Opioid Use Disorder and Opioid Misuse in Snohomish County: Using Capture-Recapture to Estimate the Burden of Disease, Dr. Beatty applied a method originally created to estimate wildlife populations and recently used to estimate the prevalence of kidney disease.

Disease burden estimates are challenging to complete in populations that are difficult to identify or pinpoint. It becomes increasingly more complex when diseases like opioid use disorder are not a notifiable condition, such as measles or whooping cough. While the published literature is sparse, it’s possible to use surveillance for opioid events in order to estimate the disease burden. This requires an additional method known as capture-recapture.

[Click here to view an overview of capture-recapture.]

For this method, Dr. Beatty accessed FirstWatch—a proprietary record management system used for EMS calls across the county—to pull data for all overdose calls recorded in July 2018. During that month, there were 73 opioid-related overdoses identified. Utilizing data compiled by Providence Regional Medical Center Everett and the Health District, made possible through a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant funded through the Washington State Department of Health, Dr. Beatty then reviewed patients seen in the emergency department. Of those 29 overdose patients at the hospital, 18 were also found in the FirstWatch data. That number translates into approximately 1,400 individuals in Snohomish County hospitalized annually because of opioids.

Using a model published by the CDC that estimates for every one death there are 32 emergency department visits for misuse and abuse, Dr. Beatty modified the calculations using Snohomish County estimates identified from the capture-recapture study.

For more information on efforts being done through the Opioid Response MAC Group, please go to www.snohomishoverdoseprevention.com. This website and accompanying social media accounts were developed to be a one-stop shop for resources. Whether trying to understand the problem, prevent addiction, or save a life, this is a place to find information for that first next step.