Volume 1, Number 1 - August/September 1997

Pat Nechodom is the Director of the University of Utah CODES project and the National EMSC Data Analysis Resource Center. BSC spoke to her about the role of multiple data sources in Safe Communities.

I presented a workshop at the Lifesavers Conference during the 1997 National Basketball Association's World Championship Finals. My opening slide stated, "The Utah Jazz and Chicago Bulls are tied at two games each." My next slide read, "Who cares?" No one cared as much as people from Utah and people from Chicago. It's the same with data. No one cares about national data as much as they care about what's happening in their own communities. National numbers don't turn heads. But if I say, "Do you know how much this is costing you in Grant County or in Livingstone County?" people stop and take note.

One community asked us to look at alcohol-involved crashes on prom weekend. They were going to spend thousands of dollars on a prom weekend promotion. We looked at the data for prom weekends over a couple of years and found that they were no different from any other weekend. However, the community did have a problem with teenage drivers and alcohol. Based on our data analysis, the community decided to spread its money out over the year.

Another program we've worked with had Safe and Sober seed money. Six police officers were trained to identify drivers who were behaving in ways indicating they might be under the influence. The officers were given a mandate to pull these drivers over and perform sobriety tests. The Safe and Sober program administrators expected the state legislature to kick in some money. But the legislature asked how they knew the program was working. We looked at the data and showed a marked decrease in crashes with injuries and hospitalization during the shifts that these six officers were on duty. This turned the legislature around. The program received funding and was expanded.

States often distribute money based on population. Rural communities have to fight for dollars because they don't have large populations. We worked with a rural county that has one county-supported hospital and a volunteer EMS. Hospital administration was having trouble meeting its payroll. The EMTs were complaining about the lack of resources. The crash data revealed that 50 percent of the crashes involved tourists. The hospital data showed the same. A lot of the tourists were young mountain bikers and whitewater rafters who did not have health insurance. Many tourists came from other countries. The hospitals were thus not getting paid for much of this care.

A Safe Community coalition was formed. Hospital personnel joined forces with the local EMS agency and the local health district. State agencies were involved. Within a year, the hospital was included in a rural health care association. It is now subsidized by larger hospitals who understand that it is providing a service. The hospital no longer worries about meeting the payroll and can focus on delivering health care.

The volunteer EMTs were not filing incident reports. They were overworked and didn't have the energy to respond to emergencies and do all the paperwork. The state EMS agency said, "We have to demonstrate community impact. The only way we can show impact is with data. If you show us how many incidents you respond to, and how many involve tourists, we can get you dollars for training and equipment." Resources were tied to compliance with record-keeping. The local EMS system began filling out incident reports and, consequently, received more money for training and equipment.

These problems had been seen as hospital problems and EMS problems. They did not become community problems until the Safe Communities Coalition used local data to pull together a real, workable solution.

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