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Providence, RI. - Datacorp president and chief executive officer Dr. P. Allison Minugh is pleased to announce that the Datacorp team has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse of the National Institute of Health.
The SBIR is a highly competitive grant program that encourages small businesses to develop specialized technologies for commercialization. The program is designed to stimulate high-tech innovation to help the United States meet its research and development needs.
Datacorp will use its SBIR funding to refine the D3: Data Documentation Database. The D3 is an automated, user-friendly software package for data documentation that solves a common threat to good research - inadequate data documentation.
"In our own data management experience, we have encountered this problem repeatedly," Minugh said. "It is endemic in clinical trials, surveys, and secondary data gathered by state agencies. Poor documentation weakens the integrity of study data and leads to incorrect conclusions, poor recommendations and differential findings - even when researchers use the same data set.
"Despite its importance, few studies document accurately. Not only are current technologies for data documentation time consuming and cumbersome, data documentation is not typically a part of formal education and training. The D3 will solve this problem using a guided format that, when combined with other features, produces accurate and complete documentation even when users have no formal training in data documentation and data management."
The D3 is specifically designed for research studies in the social sciences, epidemiological and behavioral health fields. It will benefit researchers, government officials, universities, research institutions and businesses that analyze and report their own data.
For more information, contact Datacorp at
info@mjdatacorp.com
April 24th marked the release of Laramie County Wyoming's new methamphetamine strategy, the culmination of four weeks worth of effort into how the community can combat the ongoing methamphetamine epidemic in this community. Datacorp's executive officers have been working intensively with the community methamphetamine strategy workgroup to help them formulate their strategy. The workgroup was comprised of 30 volunteers from the county including citizens at-large, business owners, faith-based group members, law enforcement, and social service providers. Workgroup members used results from a six-month meth assessment Datacorp and S.J. Miller & Associates released in February as the foundation for developing a comprehensive plan.
As a result of the workgroup's efforts, support for the community meth initiative has increased and community partnerships are integrated into the strategy. For example, the City of Cheyenne and Laramie County agreed to partner on hiring a full-time meth coordinator. In addition, the City has donated a building to house the Laramie County Meth Initiative and the new Community Resource Center.
The Cheyenne-Laramie County Methamphetamine Assessment Project Final Report, Strategy, and Strategy Map are available for download on Datacorp's publications page or by clicking on the links below.
Cheyenne-Laramie County Methamphetamine Assessment Project Final Report
Cheyenne-Laramie County Methamphetamine Assessment Project Community Strategy
Cheyenne-Laramie County Methamphetamine Assessment Project Strategy Map
In November 2005, the State of Kansas Addiction and Prevention Services of the Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services awarded a competitive contract to DATACORP. Collaboratively, DATACORP and PAXIS Institute will conduct a comprehensive study of the substance abuse treatment needs throughout Kansas. As of February, three preliminary reports have been completed. The first report is a synthetic estimation study of substance abuse treatment need. It presents "synthetic estimates" of the number of people in need of treatment in each county in Kansas. The second report is a synthetic estimate of the substance abuse treatment gaps. It identifies the number of people with unmet treatment need and demand. The third report maps the number of alcohol and drug-related arrests for adolescents and adults by county. In April 2006, DATACORP and PAXIS are scheduled to present the initial findings from these studies to Kansas stakeholders.
DATACORP is hosting an introductory seminar during the fall 2006 and will be offered in Cheyenne, Wyoming and Providence, Rhode Island. The seminar will introduce the participants to basic steps of data management. These steps will identify how to obtain the right data for the study, teach participants how to create and maintain a high quality data set, and help the audience to document the data so all stakeholders fully comprehend the data and can use it with ease and accuracy. For more information on the seminar, please click here. To learn more about how DATACORP can help you with your data management methodology, please send us an email.
DATACORP's role in the social science field is described as complex, highly technical, and sensitive. This was taken from an article featured in the Main Street section of the Providence Business News in October. P. Allison Minugh, Susan Janke, and Nicoletta Lomuto sat down with Marion Davis to discuss the social science research firm's inner-workings. In the featured article, Minugh said that, "It is a good combination of methodological and clinical skills." She also said, "The kind of stuff we do is what the universities would do, but I think we're a little more applied."The article states that DATACORP's "goal each time is to affect change - to ensure that the most vulnerable get the best help they can get, and the policy decisions are based on facts, not politics or speculation."
In Wyoming, DATACORP advised making the mental health beds for youth available for drug-addicted teens since there were so few residential treatment beds available for youth.Recently, the Wyoming officials are making it a legislative priority to take this advice. Minugh said, "Our mission is that data gets used to improve the human condition, and in this case, that's what happened. It's pretty rewarding."
To find out more about DATACORP, please click here.
Dr. Patricia Harris, a pediatrician at HealthyKids in Gardendale, AL, was the first in the nation to introduce a new technology developed by the Sontra Medical Corporation in an outpatient setting. DATACORP helped establish the efficacy of the device by conducting an independent analysis of data from clinical trials conducted by Sontra. This technology, SonoPrep, facilitates in the reduction and/or elimination of pain during inoculations. It also helps to decreases the amount of time necessary to give a child numerous shots, insert multiple IVs, and/or draw blood.
Lidocaine can be applied to the skin surface in preparation of the shot(s). Before SonoPrep, the numbing effect from this cream took at least 45 minutes. Now, prior to using the cream, the SonoPrep wand is placed on the area to receive the shot(s). The ultrasound energy from the wand creates a tiny opening in the skin, which allows the lidocaine to soak more quickly. With SonoPrep, numbing occurs in approximately five minutes.
To learn more about how DATACORP can analyze your clinical trial data, please send DATACORP an e-mail.
For more information about Sontra, please click here.
Ms. Susan Janke, M.S. gave a presentation on treating drunken driving offenders at a conference in Wyoming on May 4, 2005. The conference was sponsored by the Wyoming Governor's Council on Impaired Driving. The Council "identifies priority issues related to impaired driving, seeks to increase the public's awareness and understanding of the issues, and evaluates the effectiveness of current laws and existing programs designed to prevent or reduce impaired driving in Wyoming."
For more information on the Wyoming Governor's Council on Impaired Driving, please click here.
Ms. Nicoletta Lomuto, M.A. chaired a panel discussion/scientific roundtable on prevention and resource allocation at the Society for Prevention Research Annual Meeting May 25th - 27th in Washington, D.C. The panel discussion/scientific roundtable explored the current state of scientific and anecdotal knowledge on prevention and resource allocation. A team of experts commented on these issues and participated in a roundtable discussion with the audience.
For more information on the Society Prevention Research please click here.
DATACORP presented a poster titled "Identifying Optimal Risk and Protective Factors to Predict Adolescent Substance Use." The poster explored the relationship between risk factors, protective factors, and past 30-day substance use. The central question was to ascertain if there were certain risk and protective factors that are stronger predictors for adolescent substance use. To provide an answer this question, DATACORP examined a set of related questions. They included 1) How wide are the disparities between the risk and protection between users and non-users?, 2) Does the size of the disparity vary by substance?, and 3) Which risk and protective factors best predict the use of each substance? The results were presented in graphical and tabular formats.
For more information on the Society Prevention Research, please click here.
Dr. P. Allison Minugh, and Ms. Susan Janke, M.S. presented two posters at the RSA conference this year. The first poster reported findings from a secondary analysis performed on drug and alcohol-related social indicator data. The social indicators were used to create a Substance Abuse Problem Severity Index (SA-PSI), which was mapped to show the substance abuse problem severity distribution across the geographic areas of interest. The SA-PSI was then compared with synthetic estimates of absolute treatment need. The index proved to be a reliable indicator of need in these rural and frontier counties.
The second poster presented an application of the results from a study of treatment need for adolescents. The demand for substance abuse treatment resources often exceeds the available financial resources. With a scarcity of resources, it becomes important to determine where treatment is most needed, and whether providers are ready to deliver evidence-based services. Combining organizational change data with synthetic estimates of treatment need and arrest data provided a more comprehensive picture, and proved to be more useful for informing resource allocation than relying on any one single indicator to describe these rural treatment providers.
For more information on the Research Society on Alcoholism, please click here.
Over the years, DATACORP has perfected its role in the administration of the Communities that Care© youth survey. During this time, DATACORP has worked for a variety of state-level officials to adapt and administer the survey to youth in their states. Resulting from such adaptations, DATACORP has refined its protection of human subject research, enhanced its data collection methodology, and increased its efficiency in the data analysis and result dissemination processes.
With these advancements, DATACORP has been able to significantly reduce the cost of conducting the survey. This reduction has allowed DATACORP the opportunity to open its doors to smaller communities. DATACORP has successfully worked with numerous localities and has provided their officials with high-quality results and recommendations to guide their decision making.
The CTC© survey measures youth alcohol, tobacco, and other drug outcomes and identifies prevalent antisocial behaviors. The data from this survey can be utilized to assess existing risk factors that may lead to future substance abuse or antisocial behavior. Similarly, the results can identify protective factors that best buffer against such behavior.
To view a sample of a CTC© report, please click here.
To help the state of Wyoming make better decisions about resource allocation, DATACORP conducted a cost analysis study. The study compared the costs of providing substance abuse treatment in Wyoming with respect to national averages and the local cost of living. The study also examined how these costs can be financed through alternative sources of federal, state, and private funding.
