Increase public health data collection using Web based ASSIST Tool

The South Africa National AIDS Council (SANAC) is located within the Presidency and is tasked with coordination of the South African HIV and TB response.  This includes ensuring provision of interventions to strengthen prevention, and access to care, and collection and collation of HIV data to inform the country’s status towards achieving the 95-95-95 goals.  To facilitate the latter, SANAC has developed an extensive data dashboard which enables disaggregation data across geographic regions and enables mapping of periods of the HIV response to distinct events such as changes in policy or introduction of specific interventions.  The data dashboard has been further developed into a Situation Room, which enables visualization and presentation of this data in a meaningful way. 

The South African Medical research council hosts the SACENDU project, which amongst other activities collects treatment demand data from treatment facilities across South Africa, enabling an engagement with changing trends in treatment demand for individual substances, while also detailing intersections with HIV testing and related public health interventions at community level. The SACENDU webpage is hosted by the South African Medical Research Council website and includes a background of the project including access to Full reports; Briefs; Updates; Presentations (including treatment demand data, and alcohol and substance use related research presentations) HPCSA accredited Research translation and knowledge sharing workshop presentations (videos) and Important dates and contact information. 

Other partners include Statistics South Africa, whose role is to facilitate and nurture data ecosystems with a mission to “Transform the production, coordination and use of statistics through optimization, partnerships and innovation”; the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, whose mission is “To develop and coordinate evidence-based planning, monitoring and evaluation of developmental outcomes and impact.”; and other public health data value chain members. 

The Department of Social Development are the custodians of the Substance Use response in South Africa. The South African National Drug Masterplan (NDMP) provides the policy blueprint for addressing substance use and substance use disorders.  In addition to providing guidance for intersectoral (including through the Municipal Local Drug Action Committees and Provincial Substance Abuse Forums) and interdepartmental (through the Central Drug Authority [CDA]) collaboration in providing prevention and treatment services, the NDMP also mandates the creation of strategies for data collection (research) and comprehensive detection activities through screening and onward referral, for substance use disorders. It is under this framework that the University of Cape Town, through the International Technology Transfer Centre – South (ITTC-SA) has undertaken these collaborative efforts with national stakeholders to facilitate improved data provisioning for substance use, risk and substance use disorder in South Africa, and by extension the region and the continent. 

The U.S. Department of State INL-funded International Technology Transfer Centre – South Africa has collaborated at National level with the Department of Social Development, the Department of Health, the Department of Correctional Services, the Central Drug Authority, DA, the Department of Higher Education and Training (through Higher Health) and the Department of Basic Education to identify strategies to detect and provide intervention of harmful substance use.  South African policy as elaborated by the NDMP under the directives issued under Act No. 70 of 2008: Prevention of and Treatment for Substance Abuse Act, 2008 provides guidance for tools which should be utilized in the provision of screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment for substance use.  The ITTC – SA has developed a Web App version of the WHO Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST).  This validated tool is used to establish the level of risk over the preceding 3 months and over a lifetime across multiple substances through 8 screening questions, followed by the provision of guidance for brief intervention or referral for more specialized assessment or treatment.  The ASSIST if used routinely across sites where social and health care providers interface with members of the public presents an opportunity for passive data collection to better profile specific risk across substances across geographical regions in South Africa, potentially a rich additional datapoint to support the SACENDU treatment demand data collection activities. The Web App development includes all versions of the ASSIST including those geared towards children and adolescence and is geared towards facilitating passive risk mapping for substance use within communities across sectors.