Spatial Methods to Enhance Public Health Surveillance and Resource Deployment in the Opioid Epidemic

Abstract

Our methodology rapidly identified communities hardest hit by the opioid epidemic with standard public health data. Naloxone accessibility can be optimized with established location-allocation approaches. Public Health Implications. Our methodology can be easily implemented by public health departments for automated surveillance of the opioid epidemic and has the flexibility to optimize a variety of intervention strategies.

Suspected heroin-related overdoses incidents in Cincinnati, Ohio: A spatiotemporal analysis

“…Dworkis and colleagues [22] studied the spatial clustering of 700 EMS calls in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that involved opioid overdose to identify clusters amenable to publicly deployed naloxone sites. Dodson and colleagues [23] conducted a similar analysis in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to target pharmacies for naloxone distribution. EMS calls labeled by the dispatcher as related to overdose or opioids may not represent all such incidents, and calls to EMS may be incorrectly labeled by dispatchers as heroin-related based on information obtained from the caller.…”

Optimizing the Distribution of Pharmacy-Dispensed Naloxone Using Spatial Mapping Techniques in Rural Areas

“…The patient population studied included adults who died in the state of California from 2000 to 2014, as this time period included the greatest rate of increase of opioid-related deaths in the country (Rudd et al, 2016). Opioid overdose death data were obtained from the open source CDC Multiple Causes of Death 1999-2014 database, with mortality data based on death certificates in the 50 states and the District of Columbia (Dodson et al, 2018). For the purposes of this analysis, counties with deaths less than 10 total per year were reported as 0.…”

“…Prior studies have explored the optimal routes of prehospital naloxone distribution with mixed results (Dworkis et al, 2018). Recently, geospatial mapping techniques have begun to be used to study to optimize the planning of resource deployment for the opioid epidemic (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.; Dodson et al, 2018). There is limited evidence regarding optimal spatial distribution of direct naloxone availability through retail pharmacies.…”

Balancing Need and Risk, Supply and Demand: Developing a Tool to Prioritize Naloxone Distribution

“…2 Emerging research in the area of naloxone distribution prioritization is systematically approaching this challenge. For example, Dodson and colleagues 3 used geospatial analysis methods to identify geographic hotspots of opioid overdoses to target naloxone distribution, and Yates, Frey, and Montgomery 4 developed a telephone-based individual-level risk stratification tool to identify persons at the highest risk of overdose. Although both of these approaches are important steps in using data to drive naloxone distribution, they are limited in their ability to be scaled-up and broadly implemented by community-based programs lacking in sophisticated analytic capacity or resources for research and evaluation.…”