Case Study: Public Health Wales empowers front-line drug services and reduces harm with Tableau Software

Public Health Wales empowers programs by bringing data to the field

Public Health Wales analyzes substance-abuse data across Wales to meet needs, reduce harms, and support the population. Although it collects high-quality, large datasets (including the Harm Reduction Database with 130,000+ transactions and three million needles dispensed), frontline staff and managers struggled to see service‑wide patterns or act quickly with a client group that can be hard to reach.

By deploying Tableau, analysts, front-line staff, and managers can combine hospital, mortality, and needle‑exchange data to visualize cohorts, timing, and drug‑use patterns and take insights into the field. The result is more effective, timely services—better-informed commissioning and policy decisions and the ability to detect and respond to emerging trends as they happen.

Public Health Wales

Chris Emmerson

Information Analyst Specialist