From overdose deaths to crisis calls in Hawaiʻi, data related to drug trends is now available to the public through a new online dashboard. The Statewide Substance Use, Mental Health and Hawaiʻi CARES Summary is a web site of the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health’s (DOH) Behavioral Health Administration.

The dashboard, a collaboration between the University of Hawaiʻi, DOH and 14 partner organizations from across the state, was released in October. UH Associate Director of Cyberinfrastructure Sean Cleveland and his team, as a part of the Hawaiʻi Data Science Institute, built this new substance use disorder and mental health dashboard.

It displays Hawaiʻi’s current behavioral health trends in drug overdose, polysubstance abuse, co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders. The ongoing collaboration between UH and DOH will include more available datasets, updates to usability, accessibility and improved mobile support. Stakeholder meetings will also be held to collect feedback on the dashboard’s design and features.

“This behavioral health dashboard is of importance to Hawaiʻi because it promotes the use of public health surveillance data to improve interventions for substance use and mental disorders. Also, this dashboard provides information to the healthcare community and non-profit groups that support those who experience and/or are in recovery from these conditions, along with their ʻohana,” said Principal Investigator Treena Becker, a researcher at the Center on Aging in UH Mānoa’s Thompson School of Social Work and Public Health.

The project was funded by an almost $4.4-million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Overdose Data to Action aimed at expanding public health surveillance to allow for high quality, timely and comprehensive data collection for drug-related misuse and overdose morbidity and mortality and using these data to drive prevention strategies.