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Health & Fitness

The Survey Results Are In

The survey I created for the unofficial Santa Cruz County Needle Exchange Survey public opinion poll has closed and the report has been released!

The survey I created for the unofficial Santa Cruz County Needle Exchange Survey public opinion poll has closed. I'd like to thank each and every person who took time to participate. After much work data cleansing, number crunching, writing, and formatting, the report is complete! 

Executive Summary 

This report outlines and quantifies the findings from an online survey of 558 respondents of which 517 are residents of Santa Cruz County, California  regarding their views of needle exchange programs run by the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency (HSA) and non-governmental organizations. (NGO) The program run by the county HSA is officially known as the Syringe Services Program, but colloquially the programs are known as needle exchanges. This report uses the term needle exchange.

Support for Needle Exchange Programs 

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Data and statistics discussed only reference the 517 county resident responses. Overall public opinion regarding needle exchanges is low, however there is more support in the community for a country run program than NGOs, with 32% supporting the HSA program and 20% supporting NGO programs . For those that support either or both HSA and NGO programs an overwhelming majority (79.37%) support a 1:1 needle exchange, meaning 1 used needle turned in gets the injection drug user (IDU) 1 new needle in exchange. Of the respondents choosing to answer the demographic question of gender (99.03%) a near equal number are represented in the results (49.61% male, 50.39% female). However, there is an interesting divergence in support between male and female respondents. Female respondents support the HSA program 40%, NGO programs 24%, whereas males support the HSA program 24% and NGO programs only 16%. Those who said yes to the HSA program, overwhelmingly supported distributing sharps containers (92.62%) whereas there was little support for distributing the other items (Cookers 6.56%, Cottons 11.48%, Elastic Tourniquet 9.02%, Matches/Lighters 4.10%, Other 9.84%).

This survey concludes that the county needs to address the concerns of the public regarding IDU collateral and interrelated moral and criminal questions, along with the biohazard of used needles around the community, as the strong majority are not in favor of needle exchanges.

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FOR THE COMPLETE, DETAILED REPORT PLEASE VISIT http://wp.me/p353NU-9s

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