Local opioid mapping convening creates collaboration

On July 17th, 2018, epidemiologists, law enforcement officials, technologists, educators, and health experts came together in Colorado for an Opioid Mapping Convening. Together, they shared strategies for mapping the opioid epidemic and explained how this is being used for education and response efforts. An overview of the Opioid Mapping Initiative was given, showcasing the work of several agencies across the country that are using innovative data mapping techniques to help their communities.  

Two Opioid Mapping Initiative participants, the Tri-County Health Department and Boulder County, presented the progress they have made in mapping community resources, such as treatment locations, safe prescription drop-off sites, and naloxone providers.  Tri-County additionally discussed their overdose death maps, and its usefulness as a tool to educate people who hadn’t before seen the full impact on their community.  

The convening also took time to discuss the challenges of mapping work. One of the greatest points of concern that the group considered was privacy, and how to make data specific, but not so revealing as to show individual addresses on the map.  The Colorado Office of Health Vital Statistics, for example, only allows death data to be displayed in groupings of 3 occurrences or more, which makes the Tri-County heat maps less personally identifiable. This has been a frequent conversation amongst those in the Opioid Mapping Initiative, and aggregating data is discussed further in this blog post.  Since that post, methods such as hexbins, currently being used by  New Orleans, have been garnering interest as an alternative to showing individual data.

The convening also heard from those trying new methods for prevention through mapping. The Health District of Northern Larimer County in Colorado, for example, is mapping their death data not only to the site of overdose, but also to the home address of the individual. Although hotspots appear in downtown Fort Collins, many of the corresponding home addresses are found in surrounding suburbs.  Their Community Health Survey has therefore proved to be a valuable source of preventative information, as it maps those reporting back pain, depression, lack of access to healthcare, and other variables that might make someone vulnerable to an overdose. Visualizing the responses to this survey in coordination with death data has helped them identify their next steps for outreach.

The convening additionally devoted time to discussing mental health in general and how opioids are just a subset of a larger issue. Law enforcement officials from the City of Thornton mentioned that calls to mental health services are increasing, and should be considered in further prevention efforts.  The group concurred that the phrase “Opioid Epidemic” may not be sufficient to describe the magnitude of this problem anymore, and should instead be referred to as an “Addiction Epidemic.” While the pharmaceutical industry spurred the growth of the epidemic with opioids, several other drugs are forcing the issue to become a larger trend.

Perhaps the most promising element of the convening, however, was from those who did not present at all. There were many participants who were there to learn and repeat the successes of others working on this issue. Hopefully, more of these localized convenings can occur throughout the country, further uniting jurisdictions to tackle the Addiction Epidemic together.