What is it about?
We modeled opioid-related mortality in Ontario, Canada and found that the highest mortality rates shifted from the 45 to 54-year age group to the 25 to 44-year age group over the period 2003 to 2020. Additionally, mortality rates were overall decreasing in 2019, but increased again in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic beyond rates previously observed.
Featured Image
Photo by m. on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Opioid-related mortality is an ongoing issue that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Public health strategy to address the opioid overdose crisis should take into consideration the changing age distribution of opioid-related mortality, and target younger adults with health and social supports.
Perspectives
The novel modelling approach applied in our study was extremely useful for estimating changes in mortality rates over the last two decades, even though deaths did not occur at each single age and time point, and allowed us to explore trends up to two years in the future with assumptions. Researchers may find this method useful to model data that are similarly sparse at some points.
Lauren Paul
Public Health Ontario
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Identifying the changing age distribution of opioid-related mortality with high-frequency data, PLoS ONE, April 2022, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265509.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
