August 2024

Opioid Use Environmental Scan

McAllister Hall, Lantz McGinnis Brown, Vanessa Fry, Hannah Lang

Idaho Policy Institute is partnering with Central District Health to conduct an Opioid Environmental Scan. The purpose of this project to help Central District Health understand how to spend their remaining federal opioid settlement funds. This project involves both looking back at how past funds have been spent and looking forward to what needs and gaps exist in services.

To do this, the IPI team will complete four tasks:

1. IPI will review public data to see if there has been changes in overdose and use rates since the spending of funds.

2. IPI will meet to speak with organizations spending funds to discuss how past funds have been allocated and where.

3. IPI will work with community partners to conduct focus groups with people who know people and people with lived experiences to understand the needs of this living with opioid use disorder.

4. IPI will identify all available service providers in the Central District Health area and determine the gaps in services and where more services are needed.

This project is being worked on by a team of three IPI employees as well as two excellent Boise State students, Kristi Spalding, a social work major, and Libbie Luevanos, a master of public health student.

This project is expected to be completed in June 2025.

Blaine County Rental Market Analysis

McAllister Hall, Simon Richardson, Owen Kerr, Kristi Spalding

In August, 2024, IPI completed an analysis of the Blaine County rental market. By partnering with IPI, Blaine County  hopes to learn about what processes similar communities employ to track rental market data and how that can be applied to Blaine County in a sustainable manner.

To identify methods for tracking the local rental market, IPI conducted a literature review of comparable rental markets and interviews with contacts in those housing authorities on their community’s tracking methods.

After review of various county housing reports, as well as interviews and communications with housing authority contacts, IPI has come to the conclusion that all counties or housing authorities have a difficult time tracking rental markets sustainably and reliably. There does not seem to be a consensus on the most convenient or reliable method of tracking. Housing authorities that do attempt to track rentals tend to do so by conducting surveys, and focus groups. These methods can provide a good overall understanding of the rental market, but can be costly as it often involves contracting with a research firm. Although no county in this review has attempted to do so, there is an opportunity to experiment with data scraping. Employing the method of data scraping would require contracting with a software developer to custom-build the data scraper, and is also likely to have a large cost, but would be mostly an up-front expense for the county with smaller maintenance fees over time.

Welcome new interns!

Anthony Bertelsen is currently a student at Boise State University studying political science with an emphasis in international relations. He has a certificate in intermediate Spanish, and is working to get a certificate in conflict management. Anthony has been studying at Boise State for four years and will graduate in December after his final semester. During his time in Boise he has traveled to six countries assisting with development projects in Thailand, Laos, and Nicaragua. He also recently spent four months in Washington, D.C. living and working as an intern for Senator Jim Risch of Idaho. Over the summer he interned in Governor Brad Little’s office while assisting the Mandela Washington Fellowship. In the future he hopes to go to law school, and eventually serve his community by staying involved in Idaho politics. In his free time, Anthony enjoys all kinds of outdoor activities, whether it be fishing, hiking, or competitive shooting.

Cecilia Calvo is a senior majoring in Environmental Studies with a minor in Climate Studies. Ceci is from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her research interests include environmental policy, transportation, the environmental impact of fast fashion, human-environmental systems science, climate change, urban studies, and sustainability.

Supporting Permanent Supportive Housing Expansion

Our Path Home, Ada County’s Continuum of Care, plans to expand permanent supportive housing (PSH) by 250 units. This effort builds on the success of New Path Community Housing (New Path), Idaho’s first single-site PSH program. In August, Idaho Senators Risch and Crapo toured New Path. During the tour, IPI Director Vanessa Fry shared evaluation results demonstrating the effectiveness of PSH.

Kristi Spalding

IPI Role: Student Intern

Secret Talent: Decorating sugar cookies

Favorite pastime: Hiking (especially in National Parks)

Research Interests/ specialties: Public policy, policy evaluation and research, legislative process, state and local government, social systems evaluation, social work

Kristi is a social work major who is interested in social work on the macro level. Her specific research interests include policy evaluation, legislative process, state and local government, social systems evaluation, and social work. She joined the IPI team in January 2024.

“I initially learned about IPI through Dr. Fry when I took her Housing Opportunities for All course. I took this course because it used a hands-on learning approach where students were able to conduct necessary research under the guidance of our instructors. This course sparked a greater interest in conducting research more closely related to my social work education but I hit roadblocks when it came to building a new project on my own. I saw that IPI had an opening for a student intern and applied after talking to Dr. Fry about what the internship would look like. I’ve been a student intern with IPI for nine months and love it! The things that I’ve learned through guided, hands-on practice have not only supplemented the research education that I receive in other classrooms but it has provided a wide array of work experience that I can carry with me after graduation. IPI has been such a positive, safe, and encouraging environment to learn how to be a researcher.”  ~Kristi Spalding