Gap analysis provides data for mental health, substance abuse service plans
Dan Hammock
A recently-completed “Behavioral Health Gap Analysis” will provide the blueprint for Grays Harbor County Public Health and its partners to address barriers to mental health and substance abuse disorder services in the county.
“The Behavioral Health Gap Analysis is a big step forward in the county’s effort to develop a ‘continuous system of care’ approach to mental health and substance use disorders,” said Grays Harbor County Public Health Director Mike McNickle. “Our hope is that this report will serve as a guideline for decision makers when weighing options how to best improve the mental health and substance use disorder systems that serve Grays Harbor County residents.”
The report, released Oct. 3, used local service provider surveys and interviews, community forums and a community survey, and existing available data from local, state and national sources to paint a picture of the current situation and provide recommendations for improving services within the county.
“This report was able to be completed in a very short time frame due to the years of good questions, research, and collaboration between many of our community partners who work on these issues every day,” said Grays Harbor County Public Health Healthy Places Manager Cassie Lentz. “We are pleased to see the resulting report digs down to the root causes, not just symptoms, and most importantly outlines actionable strategies we can take on together to improve this system.”
The report is available at healthygh.org: https://tinyurl.com/bdekmtza. At the end of the report is an infographic (included with this release) that provides immediate/short-term, mid-term and long-term options for improving the existing system.
The report also includes an interactive data dashboard, available to the public. It provides a visualization of some of the key data within the report, broken down by census tract, poverty level, and race-ethnicity. The link to the dashboard is https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/hma.data.visualizations/viz/GraysHarborBehavioralHealthGapAnalysis/AmericanIndian. A screen shot of the dashboard home page is below.
For more visit https://www.healthygh.org, and follow Grays Harbor County Public Health at facebook.com/GHPublicHealth and Twitter at twitter.com/GraysCounty.
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