Risk and protection profiles for substance abuse prevention for Washington state and its communities released

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) has released the JANUARY 2022 Community Risk Profiles, a comprehensive collection of social indicators relevant to a broad range of problem behaviors among adolescents and adults, such as substance abuse among youth.

A product of the Research and Development Analysis (RDA) Community Outcome and Risk Evaluation geographic information system (CORE), nearly 50 indicators are presented in graphs, maps and tables which facilitate comparison between communities and over time. The Profiles, comprised of 455 reports, provide annual trends for the last 12 years for Washington, its counties, school districts and locales, and the U.S. as a whole.

The indicators cover such topics as child and family health, availability of drugs and substance abuse, criminal justice involvement among teens and adults, academic performance of children and youth, and socioeconomic conditions in your community.

The profiles are updated twice a year; the reports are available in PDF and Excel. The following additions and changes were implemented in the January 2022 reports:

  • The Excel reports for counties and school districts now contain a single table (a flat file) with all of the values included in the PDF report; they no longer mirror the PDF version of the report. See the tab “NOTES” for variable definitions. The PDF version includes the same presentation-ready layout of charts and tables for each indicator;
  • Community Definition pages for counties;
  • High school graduation indicators have been updated to 2020;
  • Due to COVID-19 pandemic, indicators of student achievement (Successful Academic Performance in Math and in English Language Arts), regular attendance, and weapons incidents in schools are not reported by OSPI for 2020. Updating indicators of child or family health problems has been delayed due to data system changes at DOH;
  • URLs added for data sources used in CORE and continued to enhance the design of the PDF reports;
  • COMING SOON: New PDF versions of locale reports and flat files for Excel versions of locale reports.

Use these links to access the January 2022 Community Risk Profiles:

If you have any questions, please contact DSHS RDA (Irina Sharkova).