FAACT- Framework for Addiction Analysis and Community Transformation, Department of Criminal Justice Services
Tom Fitzpatrick, Division Director/Programs

FAACT is a secure data-sharing platform that helps communities around the Commonwealth combat Virginia's opioid addiction crisis. As Virginia's premier cross-agency data-sharing initiative, the platform combines previously siloed data from a variety of different agencies, secretariats and local organizations including healthcare and social services, public safety and corrections, drug courts and community coalitions. It generates insights about contributing factors to opioid abuse and the most effective ways for communities to respond.

A self-service analytics layer allows organizations to create reports and dashboards, look at incident maps and collaborate more effectively. With this information in-hand, Commonwealth leaders can identify users who need help now, as well as those who may be more susceptible to opioid abuse in the future. The result is a solution designed to help people in need today while stopping the addiction before it begins.

The FAACT platform is already generating insights for the Commonwealth including:

• Police are better able to correlate criminal activity with drug use. In one community cocaine use was strongly correlated with an increase in violent crimes, whereas heroin addiction resulted in an increase in burglaries.
• One county saw a strong correlation between middle school marijuana experimentation and future addiction, and worked with the school district to create an early intervention program.
• One community saw higher police and emergency room encounters with opioids on Tues, Wed, Thurs (versus drugs like marijuana on the weekend). They realized they needed to conduct opioid prevention outreach mid-week and then quickly shift focus to marijuana prevention programs over the weekend.
• One community found that 20% of the people seeking drug-related treatment were from WV or MD resulting in high-cost uncompensated care. This resulted in an effort to point these individuals to resources within their state of residence.

As more communities sign onto the platform, greater amounts of data will be collected and analyzed. The resulting insights will help communities throughout Virginia arm themselves with the right information to make informed decisions about where to target their efforts and how to help their citizens.

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