Data needed in fight against opioid crisis, experts say

Ky. effort may become model for other places

WASHINGTON — The numbers are staggering, and yet Donald S. Burke wants more of them.

He believes good data is essential in fighting the opioid crisis that is growing exponentially across the country — and nowhere faster than the Appalachian region that includes Western Pennsylvania.

Dr. Burke, dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health, took his case to Washington, where he participated Monday in a panel discussion.

He and four other public health experts from other universities in Appalachia spoke to a friendly crowd of 100 — mostly interns for members of Congress, insurance companies and health care companies that are invested in the fight against opioid addiction.

The Association of Schools & Programs of Public Health convened the discussion on Capitol Hill.

Armed with statistics, the speakers made the case for data forecasting, training for first responders, medical school courses on opioid risks, increased availability of naloxone — a lifesaving drug that can reverse the effects of opioids — and early intervention.

All of that costs money, which is in jeopardy under a Republican health care plan that would cut funding to Medicaid. That would force states to make tough decisions about whether drug treatment programs were a higher priority than nursing home care, home health services, mental health treatment and other programs that would have to compete for a share of a smaller federal Medicaid pot.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to spend whatever funding is available on the right things, Dr. Burke said, and that depends on having good data.

Stakeholders in Kentucky have

been working to bring together such data for their state, and that work could become a model for other places.

Donna Arnett, dean of the University of Kentucky’s School of Public Health, described the effort. It involves agreements from numerous agencies that share police crash reports, emergency room records, autopsy reports, toxicology reports and more in an effort to identify up-and-coming hot spots for drug activity so that resources can be deployed to those communities, she said.

Dr. Burke’s own data work has focused on death records, but it isn’t enough to study those who have died. Dr. Burke also wants to analyze patterns of living addicts, including those in recovery.

Many of the records that would allow such studies are proprietary, expensive to generate or not readily shared. They include commercial vendors’ prescription data, law enforcement records of drug seizures and urinalysis collection reports.

“I think this is a major problem we have. We don’t have a good handle on the magnitude of the epidemic,” Dr. Burke said. “What we need is a concerted national effort to figure out what data to get and to get it.”

There were 4,642 overdose deaths in 2016 in Pennsylvania, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, or at least 4,812, according to coroners’ statistics — in either case, a large increase over 2015 numbers, said Jennifer Smith, acting secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.

Either number means about 13 people in Pennsylvania died from an overdose every single day last year, Ms. Smith said.