Pilot Testing TxCOPE in Travis County

Project Overview

TxCOPE, or Texans Connecting Overdose Prevention Efforts, is a set of tools built for communities to improve overdose response and prevention efforts. The mission is to save lives through empowering the community with near real-time data to inform overdose prevention and response efforts.

I was assigned the Travis County pilot site (Austin, Tx) where I focused on user management and surveying participants to achieve three goals:

  1. Measure Adoption & Engagement: How are users engaging with the platform, incorporating it into their existing workflows, and why?

  2. Product Refinement: Where are the bugs and errors in the platform and how can we optimize user flows through the product?

  3. Develop Plans to Scale: What barriers and facilitators can we learn during the pilot to hone our statewide scaling plans?

Research Setup

Onboarding/Training

  • I developed a user manual and onboarding presentation to be used at all three pilot organizations I was in charge of.

  • I stayed available via Zoom, phone, email, and in-person for technical assistance throughout the five month pilot.

  • Preliminary feedback was obtained at each onboarding event through card sorting activities and note taking.

Questionnaires

  • I worked with a professional implementation scientist in developing a longitudinal user feedback survey.

  • The survey was incentivized and deployed monthly throughout the pilot.

  • The digital survey system for all pilot sites was maintained by myself through REDCap.

Usability Interviews

  • Towards the latter half of the pilot I began interviewing participants about their experience with the product and conducting usability tests (both remote & in-person).

  • Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed.

  • I thematically coded 20+ interviews and combined qualitative data with quantitative data for analysis.

Key Outcomes

  1. Additional Variables:

    • Throughout the pilot there were many suggestions for additional data to be collected, so we added several more data points (i.e. housing status, stigma, experience with 9-1-1).

  2. Supply Management & Distribution Tracking:

    • Co-designed a supply inventory and distribution tool with pilot participants.

  3. Reduced All Critical Bugs & Errors:

    • Through the help of pilot participants, and interns that I trained and managed, I was able to relay all of the critical bugs in the platform to the software development team.

  4. Developed Plans to Scale:

    • Through trial and error during the pilot, myself and the other liaisons collaborated to layout protocols for statewide scale up.

Examples of TxCOPE Before & After Pilot

Pre-Pilot: TxCOPE Overdose Report

Post-Pilot: TxCOPE Overdose Report

Mid-Pilot: Supply Distribution Page

Post-Pilot: TxCOPE Supply Distribution Page