宾州大学公园 - The opioid overdose epidemic in the United States remains a critically important public health issue that continues to worsen as time goes on. The estimated death toll in 2021 has reached the historical high of 100,000 overdose deaths from all drugs and over 75,000 deaths from opioid overdoses. We hear a lot about healthcare data used to indicate the state of the crisis, but what about using crime data as another tool?
A new study published this month by Penn State researchers using crime incident data found that opioid-related crime incident rates were positively associated with rates of opioid-related emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and overdose mortality.
Qiushi Chen, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering, and the lead investigator on the project, noted that while healthcare data and outcomes are commonly used to characterize the state of the epidemic and evaluate the impact of policy changes, criminal justice data is under-utilized in research despite its high relevance and unique role in the opioid crisis.
“We used incident-level crime data from the 国家 Incident-Based Reporting System (NBIRS) to identify all incidents involving opioids and examined whether using crime data could describe temporal trends and shifting patterns in the opioid epidemic. 我们的结果与健康相关的数据高度一致，使犯罪数据成为了解危机变化的潜在有力工具，”陈说。
使用犯罪数据
研究小组的结果与阿片类药物流行的演变性质是一致的，正如阿片类药物过量死亡的不同浪潮所看到的那样。 Historically, the opioid epidemic has occurred within the United States in 四种不同的波. 第一波（1999-2010）主要是处方阿片类止痛药； 第二次浪潮（2010- 2013年）与转向使用海洛因有关； 第三波浪潮（2013- 2010年代末）出现了令人担忧的转向芬太尼等强效合成阿片类药物的趋势； 第四波也是当前的浪潮涉及到向多种物质使用的转变，以及兴奋剂（可卡因和甲基苯丙胺）致命过量的激增，超过了处方阿片类药物。
“And we found that the increase of opioid-related crime incident rates was predominantly characterized by incidents involving prescription opioids before 2020, followed by an accelerated shift to heroin-related incidents after 2010,” said 格伦多, assistant professor of criminal justice at 十大足彩平台 and Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction co-funded faculty member.
对医疗保健系统的影响
Tracking the opioid epidemic through crime data showed a significant relationship between opioid-related crimes and opioid-related emergency department and inpatient visits. According to 乔尔·席格, associate professor of health policy and administration and another investigator on the research team, opioid possession crimes may be more associated with adverse opioid-related health outcomes than opioid distribution crimes because they may better capture instances of substance use by individuals.
The study found that opioid-related overdoses were more highly predictive of opioid-related hospitalization, and that opioid-related hospitalizations were more predictive of fatal opioid overdoses.
“这并不奇怪，”Segel说，“因为非致命性过量通常发生在致命性过量之前。” The team’s results indicate that criminal justice data may strongly predict future healthcare utilization and overdose deaths. For example, if an individual misuses opioids or other substances, that individual may be more likely to interact with the criminal justice system earlier than the healthcare system, or before a fatal overdose can occur.
除此之外，研究小组承认，对那些涉及司法的人进行干预可能有助于减轻未来医疗保健系统的负担，并更多地关注那些利用医疗保健服务来减少急性药物使用相关问题的人。
政策改变的机会
“One of the most critical steps that we can take in regard to developing policies around substance use and misuse, overdose prevention and harm reduction is collecting and synthesizing different types of data for policymakers,” Chen said. “不幸的是，协调不同实体之间的努力以确保数据共享通常是一个缓慢且技术复杂的过程。”
Reducing barriers for data sharing, locally and nationally, would help to comprehensively address the opioid epidemic and other emerging substance use issues, according to the researchers. Not all states or local communities have developed infrastructure with adequate capacity and resources to collect, compile and match cross-sector data sets. Applying analytics to relevant data from public domain, such as the NIBRS data with detailed information at incident level, could be among practical alternative approaches for identifying emerging trends of substance uses in the community.
However, Chen emphasized the importance of a multi-pronged infrastructure with adequate policy and bureaucratic support. 陈说：“为了解决阿片类药物危机这一多方面的问题，有必要采取系统的方法，统一医疗保健、公共卫生和刑事司法等不同部门的努力。”
The project also included Zixuan Feng, a doctoral student in industrial and manufacturing engineering. This research was funded by Penn State’s 社会科学研究所 seed grant and supported by the 社会科学研究所’s Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction at Penn State.
