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Customer story · State Health

Community-level insight to fight the opioid epidemic.

Oklahoma's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services used the Syntasa Opioid Response Solution, built with Google Cloud, to combine its data with digital behavior and see which communities need help most.

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Results

From statewide averages to community-level response.

  • Data joined3kinds of data combined: services, outcomes and digital behavior
  • Prevention data500+school districts' prevention survey results being added

Context

The right treatment path, for every community.

The Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (ODMHSAS) exists to promote healthy communities and provide the highest quality care to enhance the well-being of all Oklahomans.

The opioid epidemic has affected the United States for more than 20 years, and the COVID-19 pandemic brought record increases in opioid use and overdose deaths.

ODMHSAS needed to find the best opioid treatment path for communities across the state, and to reach the people who need it most.

The constraint

Plenty of data, not enough detail.

  1. Hard to get granularThe department had a lot of data and a robust system for sharing it with other agencies, but couldn't break it down to a local level.
  2. Disjointed sourcesTreatment, prevention and overdose data came in different formats and on different timescales, often months behind.
  3. Communities differIndividual communities were suffering at different levels, so a single statewide response couldn't fit them all.
  4. Sensitive citizen dataBehavioral health data had to stay in a private cloud environment owned and governed by the agency.

Deployment

From agency data to a map of need.

Syntasa and Google Cloud built the Opioid Response Solution to help state and local behavioral health agencies unify the data on people seeking care.

  1. Step 1: Combine the sources

    The prevalence of treatment and prevention services, incidents of overdoses and deaths, and web, app and search activity in different communities.

  2. Step 2: Join behavior and outcomes

    Interactions on websites, apps and devices, outcomes from agency systems, and engagement with outreach on video, social and search, together.

  3. Step 3: Find the highest risk

    Dashboards show the communities with the highest risk and greatest need, and separate the trends for treatment from those for prevention.

“We saw in early proofs-of-concept that we could get much more granular in our understanding than before.”

Heath Hayes, Chief Communications Officer, Oklahoma ODMHSAS

Outcome

What changed for the mission.

  • Far more granular

    Early proofs of concept showed the department could understand the epidemic at a much more granular level than before.

  • Responses fitted to each community

    Seeing that communities suffered at different levels let ODMHSAS put more effective, individualized responses in place across the state.

  • Treatment and prevention, apart

    Separate trends for treatment and prevention helped the department prioritize strategic communications and use resources where they count.

  • A view of what's coming

    Access to data across agencies, including the Medical Examiner's Office, helps the state see current issues and anticipate future ones.

“We have a lot of data, including a robust system to share data with other agencies, but we had limitations in getting to a granular level. The Opioid Response Solution helped us see different trends with treatment versus prevention, and to better prioritize strategic communications… to be more impactful with resources, time, and who to engage and when.”

Heath Hayes, Chief Communications Officer, Oklahoma ODMHSAS

What came next

From insight to local action.

Google Cloud's 2022 feature described where the department planned to take the work next.

  • Prevention data from schools

    Results from the Oklahoma Prevention Needs Assessment, a statewide survey completed in schools, are being added from more than 500 school districts.

    500+ school districts

  • Search trends

    Merging the department's data with search trends, to understand what people are looking for and how it informs risk factors.

  • Data for local decision-makers

    Putting insight in the hands of local leaders, so communities and officials understand one another.

FAQ

Questions teams ask first.

Resources

Read more about the work.

Case study · PDF · 4 pages

Read the full Oklahoma ODMHSAS story.

The full story, with the architecture, how it works, a timeline and the detailed results.

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