Oregon Health Authority launches new data dashboards for injuries and overdoses

PORTLAND, Ore. (KTVZ) – The Oregon Health Authority has unveiled two interactive data dashboards to help people track state, county and demographic trends in deaths and hospital visits for a range of injuries and overdoses.

The Oregon Injury Prevention Dashboard and the Oregon Overdose Prevention Dashboard, developed by the Injury and Violence Prevention Program at the OHA Public Health Division, improve access to the data among the public, state and local agencies, and community organizations that work to reduce incidence of injuries and deaths from these causes.

“These dashboards make it easy for people to view injury and overdose data,” said Tom Jeanne, M.D., M.P.H., deputy health officer and epidemiologist at OHA’s Public Health Division. “The injury dashboard will help people understand when and why violence, unintended injuries and deaths occur, and the overdose dashboard will help people understand overdose events, deaths and the substances involved in these events.”

On the Injury Prevention Dashboard, mortality, emergency department discharge and hospital discharge data are included on 11 unintentional injury categories, such as assault, drug overdose, falls, firearms and suicide. The Overdose Prevention Dashboard has mortality, emergency department discharge and hospital discharge data on 11 drug categories, such fentanyl, heroin, opioids and stimulants.

Data on both dashboards are aggregated for annual, statewide trends and a four-year average for county-level and demographic trends.

The new dashboards reflect trends that have made headlines in recent months:

• Fatalities for several injury categories are increasing yearly, including assault, drug overdose and firearms.
• Fatalities for most drug categories increased between 2020 and 2021 – only deaths from methadone decreased. Increases are most stark for opioids, stimulants, synthetic opioids and unintentional overdoses.

“What we have seen in firearms injuries and deaths, and in overdoses from fentanyl, methamphetamine and other drugs is alarming,” Jeanne said. “Data dashboards like these help us monitor trends and better anticipate where to direct resources so we can reduce the burden of these injuries on individuals, families, communities and agencies.”