23 Selected metrics should always be derived from the program objectives, and they should be clear enough to indicate that the program is working in accord with an articulated theory of change. Many agencies and community groups have developed dashboards containing measures of success for individual programs, so stakeholders can see progress – or the lack of it – in a timely and easy-to-understand form. A number of commercial offerings provide such a function. Some statewide dashboards also have been created to provide ongoing data on program outcomes; these include Minnesota’s and Rhode Island’s, which tracks its action plan to prevent overdose deaths. c. Gauging Outcomes across Disciplines and Jurisdictions Decision-makers invariably want any program to have an impact on society that can be measured in ways that justify continued investment and attention. In the case of opioid use disorder prevention strategies, demonstrating real progress is critical. The obvious metric that has captured the public’s and media’s attention is the number of overdose deaths, which has risen dramatically during the past five years. But additional measures that legislatures – and people generally – want to know also include the number of non-fatal overdoses and of individuals who have used opioid for pain management or have succumbed to opioid use disorders. Federal and state repositories collect data that, in many cases, can be extracted to focus on a particular community or geographical area. But at the local level, it may be necessary to find sources that can be combined to reflect the experiences and knowledge of law enforcement, schools, pharmacies, health providers and social services. Some jurisdictions have created multi-agency repositories and analysis tools to combine data from multiple sources and produce extremely useful reports on the state of opioid use and overdoses. The strategy of the Drug Monitoring Initiative (DMI) at the Regional Operations Intelligence Center in New Jersey is “focused on establishing a multi- jurisdictional, multi-state, drug-incident information sharing environment that could collect and analyze drug seizures, overdoses, related criminal behavior, and related emergency medical services, to better understand the heroin and opioid epidemic in New Jersey. The components of the DMI include the collection of data, analysis, and the distribution of analytical products to constituents. The strategy also includes an outreach component to support private and public sectors and drug awareness training for public safety officials.”20 A particularly useful tool that any community can take advantage of is the mobile Overdose Detection Mapping Application (ODMAP) software developed by the Baltimore-Washington High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area organization. ODMAP allows law enforcement and other first responders to capture data when there is an overdose and when medication is administered that saves a life. ODMAP has the capability to analyze overdose spikes and provide real-time alerts using mapping technology. The intent is to inform public safety and public health organizations of unusual patterns/trends of overdose increases to improve response times. ESRI, the maker of the widely used ArcGIS system, has created a tool for the presentation of data to a community in a spatial view that can display an Opioid Awareness story map. While there have been many studies of program effectiveness related to substance use disorders, there is still much to be learned about the many innovative programs that have been tried throughout the country. Because this field is still new, relatively few tools are available to help evaluators assess specific interventions. The National Implementation Research Network is a helpful resource for understanding methods for evaluation; it has fostered the development of such tools as Hexagon for evaluating specific intervention strategies.21 Hexagon is useful for evaluating strategies (plays) for adoption in an integrated framework of responses. The tool itself provides a framework for discussion and decision-making around two major components: (1) assessing the readiness of a site in terms of capacity, fit and need and (2) assessing the utility of the program or intervention being considered in terms of the evidence supporting it, its usability and the support services available. d. Standards and Models that Can Help Automation – consistent with the protection of privacy and civil liberties – is the way to make information-sharing consistent and useful across collaborating domains to improve decision-making and processes that aid prevention as well as treatment. The key to successful automation is developing standards that allow a common understanding and use of terms as the basis for exchanging data throughout the participating organizations. Standards have been proposed to make such information exchanges easier to implement and less costly for participants. One tool developed as a result of collaboration among state, local and federal officials is the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), which is designed to promote cross-boundary information-sharing. NIEM is, first, a definition ofterms(dataelements)thathavebeenharmonizedacrossmultipledomainsincludingjustice,health,humanservices,