FindHelpNowKY.org

Overview

Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Find Help Now creates a faster and more personalized way for individuals, families, and healthcare providers to access treatment for substance use disorders (SUD). Populations struggling with SUD are often concentrated in more economically disadvantaged zip codes, indicated by higher rates of poverty and unemployment as well as lower education and median household income. This site helps solve one of the fundamental challenges of serving people struggling with addiction, which is understanding real-time treatment availability, so people can find help immediately.

After an exhaustive search for the right partner, the Find Help Now team chose APAX to design and develop a new responsive website that modernizes and expedites the search for treatment options with real-time information on available openings.

Methods used

• Quality Assurance
• Analytics & Optimization
• Data Reporting
• Training Materials
• Strategy and Branding
• UI/UX Design
• Responsive Web Development
• Software Application Architecture

Process — Research & Design

The decision to get help isn’t easy, and sometimes that decision can be fleeting, so we committed to designing an experience that reduces as much friction as possible in the process of finding help. With that principle in mind, we turned our attention to providing smooth product experiences for people managing specific treatment facilities since showing real-time availability was one of the project’s keys to success. We spoke with facility providers and learned about their work environments and their motivations to empower people struggling with addiction. After balancing the needs of people searching for help and facilities providing help, we gathered everything we needed to know to support the Find Help Now team and their needs. One of the critical pieces here was data and site usage reporting. We collaborated with the clients to specify exactly what data they needed to report on to fulfill the requirements from the CDC, the funding organization for the project.

Final Product

APAX delivered a highly responsive, mobile-friendly, and easy-to-use Section 508-compliant website to facilitate access to substance use treatment centers. It allows searches according to gender identity, treatment facility type, need for co-occurring treatment (e.g., mental health care), and 70 other search filters. All searches are location-based; an individual can search for a facility in the town of their choosing and then use over 60 search filters to narrow the search results to the facilities that most closely fit their needs for method of payment, hours of operation, wrap-around services, etc., and contains hundreds of one-page educational resources.

Near real-time availability of substance use treatment openings enhances workflow and drastically reduces the time spent by healthcare professionals, public safety partners, families, and individuals seeking treatment programs. The time it takes to find a treatment program has been reduced from 72 hours to 6 minutes.