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Saratoga County

Saratoga County Launches Substance Use Surveillance Dashboard

Saratoga County Dashboard

Saratoga County officials have been determined to find a way to address and combat the opioid epidemic in Upstate New York. On February 7, 2023, the Saratoga County Department of Health launched a tool called the Substance Use Surveillance Dashboard to help enhance the county’s opioid education, prevention, treatment, and response efforts.

The near real-time resource consists of an easy-to-navigate dashboard that houses informative data for Saratoga County professionals in law enforcement, public health, and mental health, as well as community partners who focus on substance use support services.

From Vision to Reality: Building the Substance Use Surveillance Dashboard

Blue Raster worked with epidemiologists from the Saratoga County Department of Health to design and configure the dashboard. Through a series of learning sessions, our team took Saratoga County’s vision and visualization ideas and brought them to life. Built on the ArcGIS Platform, we utilized Python scripts to update the dashboard’s key metrics for overdoses—shown through various graphs, charts, and a map by zip code. The dashboard also displays a series of charts and tables illustrating the epidemic over the years and through demographic breakdowns.

The Powerful Impact of GIS

At Blue Raster, we introduce federal, state, and local government clients, as well as global organizations, to the power of maps and GIS products as a way to respond to some of the largest health issues we face today. Saratoga County’s Substance Use Surveillance Dashboard is now another resource for local officials across multiple departments to use to educate and prevent further opioid use, provide treatment, and respond to overdoses with real-time knowledge.

“The opioid epidemic has devastated communities throughout the U.S. and like national and state trends, heroin and fentanyl continue to be key drivers of overdose deaths in Saratoga County. This dashboard will provide critical information for the County to implement effective strategies and initiatives to mitigate the effects of the opioid epidemic in our communities and the Health and Human Services Committee remains focused on supporting our county departments in these efforts.”

- Supervisor Phil Barrett (Clifton Park), Chair of the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors Health and Human Services Committee

 *Source: https://www.saratogacountyny.gov/latest-news/

Automating Workflows for COVID-19 Response

Saratoga

Saratoga County is one of the fastest growing counties in upstate New York. The Department of Public Health has a robust COVID-19 dashboard that keeps businesses, policy makers, schools, and the general population informed of the rate of cases and hospitalizations. Using a New York State Department of Health emergency funding Coronavirus Response grant, the county partnered with Blue Raster for support with automating workflows and deploying ArcGIS Enterprise.

automating workflows

The Blue Raster team worked with the Department of Health to automate their daily data publishing process through ArcGIS Notebooks. Notebooks are an efficient, modern environment that combine code, on-the-fly visualizations and maps, as well as data tools. In the notebook editor, you can write, document, and run Python code in one place. This helped with automating workflows reduced the time spent each day updating the dashboard.

Blue Raster is also supporting the installation and configuration of a base deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise to support the expanding use of ArcGIS. We’re here to serve any state and local organization looking to better utilize their data.

Esri State and Local Specialty