Community Spring Cleaning week is here! Join your fellow Maveryx in digging through your old posts and marking comments on them as solved. Learn more here!

Alter.Nation

Community news, customer stories, and more!
ToriA
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Alteryx is on the road to solving.Alteryx is on the road to solving.

The office of the Chief Technology Officer, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is hosting their first Code-a-Thon in Washington, D.C., on December 6th and 7th. The HHS is bringing together 28 teams of engineers, data analysts, data scientists, public health experts, and researchers to work together to begin the journey of combating the opioid crisis.   

 

As many of you know, we are facing a crisis of opioid addiction across the United States. According to the Center for Disease Control 91 Americans die every day as a result of opioid overdose.

 

HHS.pngSo, what does HHS want to accomplish by hosting an Opioid Code-a-Thon? The challenge is designed to focus on developing potential solutions in three categories. The Code-a-Thon will have three tracks: Usage, Prevention, and Treatment that will enable progress across the elements of their 5-point strategy to address the crisis.

 

  1. Improving access to prevention, treatment, and recovery services, including the full range of medication-assisted treatments
  2. Targeting availability and distribution of overdose-reversing drugs
  3. Strengthening an understanding of the crisis through better public health data and reporting
  4. Providing support for cutting-edge research on pain and addiction
  5. Advancing better practices for pain management

When HHS invited Alteryx For Good to co-sponsor the Code-A-Thon there was an overwhelming amount of excitement, passion and energy from our associates. We wanted to provide additional support by sending a team to participate in the challenge. After we sent a “call to volunteers” we experienced a response like no other. People jumped at the opportunity, expressing emotion and strong commitment to contribute to the greater cause.

 

Not only are we co-sponsoring and sending one team as we had originally planned, we have four teams of 19 Alteryx associates and Alteryx ACE partners attending the Code-a-Thon! The ability to engage in the early stages of uncovering data, searching for clarity and finding solutions that can impact federal, state and local communities is a powerful opportunity to influence social change. We want to thank our volunteers who are giving their time, technical expertise, and resources toward this effort and jumping on the journey with us!

 

 

Team 1 - Prevention Track

Team 3 - Usage Track

JP Kabler (@JPKa) – Software Engineer

Mac Roach (@MacRo) – Lead Research Scientist

Steve Wagner (@StephenW) – Sr. Product Engineer

Matt DeSimone (@MattD) – Community Content Engineer

David Wilcox (@DavidW) – Sr. Software Engineer

Criston Schellenger (@CristonS) – Associate Research Scientist

Kuo Liu (@KuoL) – Data Scientist

Brandon Kirkland (@BrandonK) – Software Engineer

Bridget Toomey (@BridgetT) – Research Scientist

 

 

 

Team 2 - Treatment Track

Alteryx ACE's - Treatment Track

Dr. Dan Putler (@DrDan) – Chief Data Scientist

Mark Frisch (@MarqueeCrew) – Marquee Crew

Michael Chadwick (@MichaelCh) – Software Engineer

Andrew Kim (@andrewdatakim) – Adventist Health System

CJ Campbell (@CaleighC) – Software Engineer

Patrick McAuliffe (@patrick_mcauliffe) – Meijer

Ben Burkholder (@BenBu) – Customer Success Mgr

John Schneider (@JohnJPS) – Sentry

Mala Gosakan (@MalaG) – Technical Program Mgr

 

 

 

We know many of you share the same passion as our volunteers participating and there are ways for you to be a part of this journey as well. It all starts Wednesday, December 6th!

 

Before teams begin to code, HHS is hosting a “TED-talk style” Symposium where policymakers and state and local leaders present how they are currently unlocking public sector data, leveraging emerging technologies in public health surveillance and innovations to address the opioid epidemic facing their communities. You can register for the public live stream video of the Symposium which takes place on Wednesday from 8:30am – 12:30pm ET.

 

As you can imagine, our teams will need patience and endurance as they code for 24 hours and eagerly await the judges to announce the results at 6pm ET on December 7th. We’re sure they would love to know their Alteryx fans are rooting for them from all over the nation! Support our teams from our social channels as we’ll be sharing photos and updates along the way.

 

You can find more about sponsors and Code-a-Thon updates on the HHS website.

 

Twitter

 

Facebook

 

We believe this event marks the beginning of the road to solving, uncovering and developing data-driven solutions to the opioid epidemic. We are honored and thrilled to be a part of this journey and thank each and every one of you for supporting our efforts and volunteers along the way!

 

The Alteryx for Good Team

Tori Adamo
Director, Corporate Social Responsibilty- Alteryx for Good

Tori Adamo is the Director of Alteryx for Good, our corporate social responsibility program at Alteryx. She is responsible for building a growing community of volunteers focused on doing good. Tori believes that connecting associates, partners, and customers gives power to a greater purpose. Alteryx for Good strives to allow all of us to influence social change and education. Whether it’s with hands-on volunteering or by sharing an expertise of analytics using Alteryx, there is a way for everyone to get involved.

Tori Adamo is the Director of Alteryx for Good, our corporate social responsibility program at Alteryx. She is responsible for building a growing community of volunteers focused on doing good. Tori believes that connecting associates, partners, and customers gives power to a greater purpose. Alteryx for Good strives to allow all of us to influence social change and education. Whether it’s with hands-on volunteering or by sharing an expertise of analytics using Alteryx, there is a way for everyone to get involved.

Comments
QuyenT
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Go Team Alteryx! We're excited and will be supporting you from the HQ :)

MarqueeCrew
20 - Arcturus
20 - Arcturus

Looking at some 2015 facts regarding the Opioid Epidemic you can see a macro view of the problem:opioids-infographic-080817.jpg

 

Understanding that roughly 100 lives are lost every day is a different story.  But bringing that count down to one picture brings the light of the problem to another level.

 Delaney Farrell.jpg

“Funny, I don’t remember no good dope days. I remember walking for miles in a dope fiend haze. I remember sleeping in houses that had no electric. I remember being called a junkie, but I couldn’t accept it. I remember hanging out in abandos that were empty and dark. I remember shooting up in the bathroom and falling out at the park. I remember nodding out in front of my sister's kid. I remember not remembering half of the things that I did. I remember the dope man’s time frame, just ten more minutes. I remember those days being so sick that I just wanted to end it. I remember the birthdays and holiday celebrations. All the things I missed during my incarceration. I remember overdosing on my bedroom floor. I remember my sisters cry and my dad having to break down the door. I remember the look on his face when I opened my eyes, thinking today was the day that his baby had died. I remember blaming myself when my mom decided to leave. I remember the guilt I felt in my chest making it hard to breathe. I remember caring so much but not knowing how to show it. and I know to this day that she probably don’t even know it. I remember feeling like I lost all hope. I remember giving up my body for the next bag of dope. I remember only causing pain, destruction, and harm. I remember the track marks the needles left on my arm. I remember watching the slow break up of my home. I remember thinking my family would be better off if I just left them alone. I remember looking in the mirror at my sickly completion. I remember not recognizing myself in my own d@mn reflection. I remember constantly obsessing over my next score but what I remember most is getting down on my knees and asking God to save me cuz I don’t want to do this no more!!!“

 

Four (4) teams sponsored by #AlteryxForGood went to DC to take up the challenge to look for ways to help stop the epidemic.  The facts were overwhelming and the impact on communities and families were astonishing.  The data clearly shows patterns of use and lack of resources.  Allocation of resources to best suit the needs of individuals (beyond the monetary cost to families) leaves many isolated in treatment deserts.  @DrDan built a model to help determine placements of treatment services, while our team identified over a dozen congressional districts where no treatment centers existed.  Within these areas, roughly 3 million Americans live and where in the last 2 years 8,000 lives have been lost to opioid related deaths.

 

Our team was on the treatment track.  We presented a tool that compares the deaths and treatment centers available within congressional districts (though any GIS polygon can be used) to identify where to ask for help and more importantly which leaders need the most help.  Other teams included real-time monitoring of twitter messages (AI) and emergency response data to predict which areas were likely to spike with overdoses while drugs are trafficking along America's highways.  This cat and mouse game comes after the introduction of opioids as a simple solution to pain.

 

Doctors didn’t know how to deal with many of the complex pain problems their patients were dealing with, because in many cases the answers were complicated and simply required too many resources and too much time. So an easy response was to give patients some pills.

In the US, there are 50,000 opioid doses for every 1 million people.  No other country comes close to us (Vox - Opioid epidemic).  The problem is here.  The problem is growing.  In 2016, more than 64,000 people died from drug overdoses.  That's more than died from gun-related murders, car crashes, HIV/AIDS and all US military casualties in Vietnam and Iraq wars combined.

 

Our team will work with AFG and will continue to help this cause.  Watch the Alteryx Community for more detailed recaps of each of the teams #DataForOpioid contributions.  There isn't going to be a single simple solution.  That's the source of the problem!  We can't just take a pill to take away the addiction epidemic.

ToriA
Alteryx Alumni (Retired)

Thank you Mark! 

JohnJPS
15 - Aurora

Late notice... there's a program on the Opioid Epidemic just starting *RIGHT NOW* on PBS.