• Yongwen Jiang, James V McDonald, Ariel Goldschmidt, Jennifer Koziol, Meghan McCormick, Samara Viner-Brown, and Nicole Alexander-Scott.
• Senior Public Health Epidemiologist in the Center for Health Data and Analysis at the Rhode Island Department of Health, and Assistant Professor of the Practice of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Brown University.
• R I Med J (2013). 2018 Sep 4; 101 (7): 25-30.

AbstractUnintentional opioid overdoses are a growing public health epidemic in the United States. Rhode Island is also faced with a challenging crisis of drug overdose deaths. The State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting Surveillance (SUDORS) data from the second half of 2016 were used to present opioid overdose deaths and characteristics in Rhode Island. During July-December 2016, 142 individuals died of opioid overdose in Rhode Island. People who died by opioid overdose were more likely to be 25-65 years old, male, and non-Hispanic white. The most common precipitating circumstances were substance abuse (88%), current mental health problems (43%), and physical health problems (27.5%). Over 83% of decedents had 2 or more substances attribute to causing their death, with fentanyl (71.1%) as the most common substance. Only 36.6% of decedents had naloxone administered. Fatal opioid overdose data are important for understanding this public health crisis and can guide overdose intervention efforts.

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