From Data to Action: Prioritizing Opioid Abatement Strategies at the Municipal Level

This Municipal Opioid Abatement Learning Opportunity focuses on turning data into funding decisions. The session includes an overview of publicly available quantitative data, including the Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS) dashboard, and how municipalities can enhance that data with their own local data collection. Municipal representatives share how they gathered and used local data to prioritize and fund opioid-related initiatives.

Objectives:

1. Identify data on treatment services, substance addiction indicators, and enrollments in BSAS services by demographic and geographic attributes using the BSAS dashboard, updated in August 2026.
2. Describe practical, low-cost methods for collecting local data, such as surveys and focus groups, to enhance regional or state-level data and describe strategies to build capacity for data collection and analysis.
3. Compare different approaches to local data gathering and analysis, including survey design, focus groups, and partnerships with universities or interns, and consider how to right- size options to fit different municipalities’ capacity and needs.
4. Describe examples of how municipalities translated data findings into an action plan and prioritized funding decisions for opioid abatement dollars.

Resources:

• Watch Webinar Recording
• Webinar slides
• From Data to Action: Using Community Needs Assessment Findings to Set Opioid Abatement Priorities