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Moving Data to
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Authors: Rachel Roy, PhD, Ana Zanganeh, MPH, and Jennifer Kiger, MPH In December 2022, a critical MMWR publication showed that overdose deaths increased by 109% for persons between the ages of 10 to 19 from 2019 to 2021. Deaths where fentanyl and fentanyl analogs were involved also increased by 182% for ages 10 to 19 between 2019 to 2021. In Harris County, non-fatal and fatal overdoses within this same age group and years had doubled. These statistics show a growing need to focus on the youth population. We, at Harris County Public Health Department, are really excited to be building partnerships to develop a notification system to inform and provide responses in a timely manner to those adolescents at risk of substance use-related death or injury. Responses will include outreach, linking individuals to care services, treatment options, and other community services supporting overdose prevention. Surveillance is an integral part of our epidemiological work that shows the trends happening across the county. Fire departments and other Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers respond to overdose events calls and help capture all events for surveillance and prevention planning. HCPH collaborates with these agencies to exchange data. Traditional surveillance data sources only track overdose patients that are transported to an emergency room; however, this EMS data also captures overdoses for individuals that are not transported to the emergency room but are treated in the field. This partnership is helpful in identifying areas for concentrated efforts such as targeted messaging, outreach through community activities, and education. The initial rollout with these agencies has been successful and provided essential data. We continue to identify additional opportunities to expand our surveillance efforts and partnerships, including signing up more providers in the greater Houston area to strengthen our data analysis and ability to help our community. As an extension of our surveillance efforts, we are also committed to sharing our findings with the community and are transitioning our internal substance use dashboard to a public-facing substance use data hub. Through this dashboard, we plan to share our findings on overdose trends in Harris County from the variety of data sources that we monitor. These sources include mortality data from the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, emergency department visit data from the Houston syndromic surveillance network, and prescription drug data from the Texas Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. We hope to expand the depth and breadth of information covered on our data hub to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of drug overdoses in the community.
The work that we do in
public health is rewarding. Helping drive public health practice in
local areas that need it the most is what motivates us. We all work
and learn from each other to better serve our community and have made
significant improvements and accomplishments, with no plans to slow
down soon. As the opioid epidemic continues to grow as a concern, we
plan to work together in full force to increase programs, use data as
a driving force to action, and monitor trends that will help with
prevention efforts of substance use and overdoses in our community. ■ |
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