IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v19y2022i21p13796-d951277.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of COVID-19 on Opioid-Related Overdose Deaths in Texas

Author

Listed:
  • Karima Lalani

    (Center for Health Systems Analytics, UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics, Houston, TX 77030, USA)

  • Christine Bakos-Block

    (Center for Health Systems Analytics, UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics, Houston, TX 77030, USA)

  • Marylou Cardenas-Turanzas

    (Center for Health Systems Analytics, UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics, Houston, TX 77030, USA)

  • Sarah Cohen

    (Center for Health Systems Analytics, UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics, Houston, TX 77030, USA)

  • Bhanumathi Gopal

    (Center for Health Systems Analytics, UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics, Houston, TX 77030, USA)

  • Tiffany Champagne-Langabeer

    (Center for Health Systems Analytics, UTHealth Houston School of Biomedical Informatics, Houston, TX 77030, USA)

Abstract

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States was facing an epidemic of opioid overdose deaths, clouding accurate inferences about the impact of the pandemic at the population level. We sought to determine the existence of increases in the trends of opioid-related overdose (ORO) deaths in the Greater Houston metropolitan area from January 2015 through December 2021, and to describe the social vulnerability present in the geographic location of these deaths. We merged records from the county medical examiner’s office with social vulnerability indexes (SVIs) for the region and present geospatial locations of the aggregated ORO deaths. Time series analyses were conducted to determine trends in the deaths, with a specific focus on the years 2019 to 2021. A total of 2660 deaths were included in the study and the mean (standard deviation, SD) age at death was 41.04 (13.60) years. Heroin and fentanyl were the most frequent opioids detected, present in 1153 (43.35%) and 1023 (38.46%) ORO deaths. We found that ORO deaths increased during the years 2019 to 2021 ( p -value ≤ 0.001) when compared with 2015. Compared to the year 2019, ORO deaths increased for the years 2020 and 2021 ( p -value ≤ 0.001). The geographic locations of ORO deaths were not associated with differences in the SVI. The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on increasing ORO deaths in the metropolitan Houston area; however, identifying the determinants to guide targeted interventions in the areas of greatest need may require other factors, in addition to community-level social vulnerability parameters.

Suggested Citation

  • Karima Lalani & Christine Bakos-Block & Marylou Cardenas-Turanzas & Sarah Cohen & Bhanumathi Gopal & Tiffany Champagne-Langabeer, 2022. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Opioid-Related Overdose Deaths in Texas," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-13, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:21:p:13796-:d:951277
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/13796/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/13796/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parisa Bozorgi & Jan M. Eberth & Jeannie P. Eidson & Dwayne E. Porter, 2021. "Facility Attractiveness and Social Vulnerability Impacts on Spatial Accessibility to Opioid Treatment Programs in South Carolina," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(8), pages 1-13, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karima Lalani & Meredith O’Neal & Simone Lee Joannou & Bhanumathi Gopal & Tiffany Champagne-Langabeer, 2023. "Helping Frontline Workers in Texas—A Framework for Resource Development," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(20), pages 1-10, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sauer, Jeffery & Stewart, Kathleen, 2023. "Geographic information science and the United States opioid overdose crisis: A scoping review of methods, scales, and application areas," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    2. Jabrullah Ab Hamid & Muhamad Hanafiah Juni & Rosliza Abdul Manaf & Sharifah Norkhadijah Syed Ismail & Poh Ying Lim, 2023. "Spatial Accessibility of Primary Care in the Dual Public–Private Health System in Rural Areas, Malaysia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(4), pages 1-21, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:21:p:13796-:d:951277. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.