Congressional districts with the best opioid prescribing charges are predominantly concentrated within the southeastern U.S., with different hotspots in Appalachia and the agricultural west, in keeping with a brand new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan College of Public Well being. The research, the primary to concentrate on opioid prescribing charges on the congressional district degree, may assist coverage makers on the federal and state degree higher goal intervention and prevention methods.
The research might be revealed on-line July 19, 2018 in American Journal of Public Well being.
“It is crucial for public well being analysis to concentrate on geographical items corresponding to congressional districts because it permits for elected representatives to be extra knowledgeable about vital points such because the opioid epidemic. As a result of a congressional district has a named elected consultant, not like say a county, it brings a sure diploma of political accountability on the subject of discussing the opioid epidemic,” mentioned S V Subramanian, professor of inhabitants well being and geography.
The research discovered that Alabama’s Fourth Congressional District had 166 opioid prescriptions per 100 folks, the best fee of any district within the nation. Districts in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Virginia, and Oklahoma rounded out the highest ten areas with the best prescribing charges. Different excessive prescribing charges had been present in districts positioned in japanese Arizona, Nevada, northern California, rural Oregon, and rural Washington.
The bottom opioid prescribing charges tended to be concentrated in congressional districts close to city facilities, together with Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Virginia was the one state that had congressional districts with top- and bottom-ten opioid prescribing charges.
The findings come amid a nationwide opioid epidemic that has claimed tens of hundreds of lives. Between 1999 and 2010, prescription opioid-related overdose deaths quadrupled, in keeping with the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention, and the epidemic was estimated to value $78.5 billion in 2013 — one-third of which was spent on well being care and remedy prices. In 2016 overdoses resulted in additional than 42,000 deaths, and the next 12 months President Trump formally declared a public well being emergency.
“A substantial amount of variation might exist between state-level opioid prescribing charges and prescribing charges in particular congressional districts inside the state,” mentioned Lyndsey Rolheiser, a postdoctoral analysis fellow and lead creator of the paper. “Having these information may assist representatives advocate extra strongly for federal insurance policies geared toward curbing the opioid epidemic and serving to their constituents.”
Different Harvard Chan researchers who contributed to this work included Jack Cordes, a grasp’s scholar in epidemiology.
