In the not-too-distant past, vehicle crashes were the leading cause of injury deaths in the U.S. Then gun violence began claiming more lives than cars a few years ago, and deaths from opioid overdoses soon caught up as well. Overdose deaths from opioids now lead the pack for injury deaths in the U.S., so if you haven’t already reported extensively on opioids, you inevitably will soon. The following sources of data about opioids, opioid use disorder and overdoses may help with reporting, though don’t forget to scour PubMed for incidence and prevalence studies and other research.
- The National Institute on Drug Abuse has pages on opioids in general, prescription opioids and overdose rates with extensive data sources and other links.
- The CDC’s Opioids Portal and Opioid Overdose sections, as well as its People Who Inject Drugs section (including a data/surveillance page), are also helpful.
- In addition to a Health and Human Services page specifically about the opioid epidemic, the federal government has a good overview about opioids at, appropriately, Opioids.gov. Though light on actual data, context and background on opioid addiction is available at the National Library of Medicine.
- The National Survey on Drug Use and Health includes breakdowns about opioids in its archive of published survey results and studies.
- The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) lists recent reports and other data in the sidebar of its opioids page.
- For global stats, see the WHO’s info sheet on opioid overdose, including facts and figuresand research tools.
- Finally, for data on opioids and overdoses in individual states, see the opioid summaries by state at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In addition to state-specific data, each page has links to respective state government’s health departments, opioid initiatives or other resources for state-specific data. Ohio’s page, for example, links to the Ohio Department of Health’s Drug Overdose in Ohio page.