KEY PROJECTS Policy Planning and Analysis… EMT has extensive experience providing needs assessment, capacity assessment, cost and cost-effectiveness analyses, planning assistance, and other planning and decision making support to state and local agencies. This work includes studies of the economic and social cost of substance abuse in California counties; assessments of early childcare need in the Navajo Nation; development of a practical, post hoc costing template for social services programs; and more. EMT is currently developing innovative ways of disaggregating social indicators to provide useful performance monitoring tools for county and community decision makers. This work builds on the County Social Indicator Handbooks that EMT has produced for the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. Information on selected policy planning and analysis projects appears below. Napa County Substance Use Prevalence Analysis EMT worked with Napa County, California prevention planners to develop a model for using archival alcohol and other drug indicator data to assess local prevalence and consequences of substance use within the county. The project involves disaggregating archival data to provide standardized reporting of incidence rates within gender, age, and race/ethnic category at the county, city, and zip code area levels. The project also involves expanding use of analytic tools, such as trend analysis, Population Attributable Risk (PAR ), and spatial modeling, to more effectively assess the current status of alcohol and other drug use and related problems across population sub-groups, and to monitor changes in problem status over time. Placer County Greater Collaborative Pocket Area Analysis EMT worked with the Placer County Greater Collaborative in Placer County, California to explore the feasibility of using archival data sources to conduct targeted analyses of sub-groups within the county as part of a comprehensive needs assessment of community health and well-being. The Placer County Pocket Area Study examined data for targeted geographic areas that were designated by community health planners to be high risk “pockets” of the county. The geographic areas under study were defined by overlays of Census Designated Place (CDP), law enforcement jurisdiction, zip code area, and school district, and were assessed using a number of archival indicator sources, including census information, vital statistics, hospital and alcohol and drug treatment utilization data, law enforcement arrest data, and school district enrollment information. The study highlighted many of the benefits and challenges involved in establishing standardized measurement of population sub-areas using state maintained data sources. San Diego Health Services Alcohol and Drug Abuse Cost Analysis EMT’s work at the county level has also included the use of indicator data to assess the economic costs to communities associated with alcohol and other drug abuse. Under contract with the San Diego County Health Services Agency, EMT conducted a county cost analysis, which included measures of direct costs to the health care, criminal justice and welfare systems, and indirect costs associated with lost productivity from alcohol and drug-related morbidity and mortality. EMT adapted a cost-of-illness framework used in previous national studies, and applied county-level archival data to cost estimation models to arrive at estimates of the impacts of substance use on local communities. To help address this local gap in resources and knowledge, EMT designed a Resource Guide for Using Community Quality of Life Indicators as a tool to support local planners in their efforts to assess community needs and to monitor progress toward achievement of health outcomes. The guide provides information on more than forty indicators of community health, education, and safety taken from state sources. For each indicator, the guide provides a description of the indicator measure, the data source, a formula for standardizing population-based rates, details for disaggregating by subgroup, national benchmarks where available (e.g, Healthy People 2010), and a discussion of data limitations.