The state recently introduced Substance Use Disorder Analytics, or SUDA. It’s designed to bring data from multiple agencies together in one place, allowing officials to better understand where substance use issues are developing and how communities are responding to them. Within the system’s data tool, public-facing reports provide information to the community, while researchers and organizations can request access to more detailed data for study.
A key early benefit of the platform is its use of heat maps to pinpoint emerging overdose hot spots, highlighting areas where fatalities are rising. What makes that visibility powerful, Deputy Chief Data Officer Marcus Thornton said, is the ability to quickly compare those trends against where funding and services are currently being directed. The insight isn’t just that a problem exists, but whether resources are aligned with need — and if they’re not, how quickly that gap can be corrected before conditions worsen. In layman’s terms, the data — which incorporates various data sets, from community risk factors and drug trends to treatment access, crisis services, overdose incidents, and broader social and economic impacts of substance use — can reveal a growing crisis in a specific area before response dollars or services can catch up.
Equally important, Thornton said, is how SUDA removes delays that previously slowed prevention and response efforts. Before the platform existed, people working in harm reduction or policy often had to dig through files or submit requests to four or five different agencies to piece together what was happening on the ground. Instead of waiting weeks or months for information to be compiled, they can now act more quickly — a speed he directly linked to the difference between intervening in time and responding after a life has already been lost.
The platform also allows users to drill down into regional and demographic trends, drug composition and illicit drug market activity, creating a more detailed picture of why incidents are happening in certain places — which makes it possible to tailor interventions rather than rely on more reactive responses.
SUDA was developed by the Virginia Office of Data Governance and Analytics in partnership with the Virginia Information Technologies Agency and the Virginia Opioid Abatement Authority.
The new data system is expected to be used first by state agencies and later by local governments, researchers, tribal organizations, law enforcement and emergency responders. It replaces an earlier effort and launched earlier this year, with updated infrastructure and new data-sharing processes developed with support from Deloitte.
Virginia’s approach does mirror similar efforts in other states. Massachusetts publishes public health dashboards to track treatment and prevention efforts, Ohio began providing overdose trend tools in 2023, and Pennsylvania links overdose incidents with prescription and prevention data to show connections across the response system. Thornton said SUDA wasn’t built by copying another state’s playbook, but the team did look at other states for inspiration.
“We look at other states just for, you know, how they put together their dashboards in general,” he said, indicating the team “looked at a state like Massachusetts, which does provide insights related to substance use disorder.” Those examples, he said, helped inform what was possible, but they were not the foundation.
Instead, SUDA was built “by taking the perspectives of different folks within the commonwealth, meaning different agencies, their leadership,” Thornton said. “We really wanted to cultivate this in a way where the input was coming from within.”
What really separates SUDA from similar state systems, the deputy chief data officer said, is that it’s not just reporting numbers — it’s connecting the dots. And as more data is accumulated, the goal is to anticipate where incidents are likely to occur again and to measure how outcomes change as interventions evolve.
Over time, Thornton said, the platform aims to shift from merely tracking harm to anticipating risk — a transition he considers crucial to preventing overdoses. As he said, “ultimately, success is whether we can use this information to save lives and prevent deaths.”
