Municipal key indicators on alcohol and drugs now available

28.12.2006

SOTKAnet has made available a new set of municipal key indicators on alcohol and drugs.

The indicators are the result of a joint indicator project of State Provincial Offices, co-ordinated by the Social and Health Department of the Lapland State Provincial Office.   In addition to the 10 municipal key indicators, the indicator set comprises national background indicators. The aim is to support municipalities in bringing up, planning and developing substance abuse issues.

The project has thus provided the municipalities with a tool that encourages them to promote health and that facilitates the use of statistical information locally by means of the interpretative questions of the key indicators. The most important criterion for these indicators has been comparability. A further aim of the project was to enhance co-operation between the provinces.

The SOTKAnet alcohol and drug indicators allow municipalities to assess welfare and health trends among local inhabitants and to decide how resources should be allocated in the future. In the context of the restructuring of local government and services in Finland, the new indicator set also helps bring up and discuss substance abuse issues and matters affecting them.  

More detailed information on the project is available in the final report of the project (in Finnish).

The data contained in the indicator set have partly already been released in SOTKAnet. In addition, the indicator set includes completely new indicators that draw on the datasets and registers of STAKES, the Social Insurance Institution and Statistics Finland.