Gambling Treatment Shortages in the US

Partners: Rutgers University School of Social Work, Center for Gambling Studies
Project Lead: Jamey J. Lister, Rutgers

Sponsors: Playtech

Aim: This project involves three separate and related goals:
  1. to create novel and innovative multi-year data sets that also will demonstrate feasibility for future years of data collection and linkage to other sources;

  2. to use the novel data sets to calculate treatment availability measures for GD (raw and per-capita supply of certified and non-certified GD treatment providers/locations), while calculating similar measures for SUDs and mental health disorders;

  3. to conduct statistical analyses to identify GD treatment shortages among rural communities, examine the extent of GD treatment shortages compared to those for other psychiatric disorder services, and whether GD treatment shortages are changing year over year.

Current Progress: To date, the researchers have made significant progress on the project. They have linked the raw and per-capita GD treatment and recovery service metrics to multiple geographic codes at the county, state, division, and region levels.

These schemes include Rural-Urban Continuum Codes (e.g., urban, micropolitan rural, and remote rural counties), the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service County Typology Codes (e.g., counties dependent on farming, manufacturing, government support, etc.), and the U.S. Census Bureau categorizations of divisions (e.g., New England, Mountain) and regions (e.g., Northeast, South, Midwest, West).
Demographic measures (e.g., education, poverty, disability, income, race, etc.) extracted from the U.S. Census Bureau in the first quarter were linked at the county level during the second quarter.

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