Mobile Sharps Team Example

Introduction

The opioid crisis has devastated communities in Boston and across the country. One of the effects of the crisis is a nationwide increase in the number of used needles found in public spaces. The used needles could transmit Blood-borne diseases, such as HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis B, to drug users who use the needles and members of the public who accidently come into contact with the needles. In 2015, Boston Mayor Marty J. Walsh founded the Mobile Sharps Collection Team to pickup used needles found in public spaces. The following paper will give suggestions to the Mobile Sharps Collection Team on how to improve their effectiveness.\n

Suggestion

The suggestions from the analysis is for members of the Mobile Sharps Collection Team to conduct daily searches before 7 AM and 5 PM of areas with higher than average amounts of needles found. The targeted daily searches before high traffic times would not require large amounts of resources and could greatly limit the public’s potential exposure to blood-borne diseases from used needles.

Analysis

The analysis in the paper comes from 311 submissions from July 1st, 2017 to January 5th, 2018. The data shows that needle pickup requests are most commonly reported at certain locations and times in Boston.

Figure 1: Counts of Weekday Needle Pickups Requests through Citizens Connect App by Hour

As demonstrated in Figure 1 the largest amount of requests come at the hours of 7 AM and 8 AM when people are heading to work and at the hour of 5 PM when people are leaving work. These times are likely when the largest number of people are outside, and therefore more people come across needles and report their locations.

Figure 2: Map of Needle Pickup Requests in area of South End (left) and Boston (right)

Additionally, a majority of the requests for needle pickups in Boston come from certain neighborhoods or streets. The neighborhoods of Roxbury and South End make up 54.75% of needle pickups while according to the 2010 census only have 12.05% of Boston’s population.2 Furthermore, Figure 2 shows an example of the heavy concentration of needle pickups in certain streets in Boston. On the left side of Figure 2, is an area in South End near the ​Boston Public Health Commission that has a large percentage of Boston’s needle pickups.