A big headline in the past few years has been opioid misuse and abuse, with many even calling it an epidemic. To help address this growing concern a new tool on the Texas Health Data Center for Health Statistics website allows for a particular insight into opioid related deaths in Texas: http://healthdata.dshs.texas.gov/Opioids/Deaths.
This website with Texas Health and Human Services has helped to pinpoint areas that are seeing large numbers of opioid related deaths. The website is in the form of a dashboard that shows opioid related deaths from 1999 to 2015.
Opioid related deaths are broken down by types of opioids, Texas counties, race/ethnicity, sex, age groups, education levels, and marital status. Overall, this tool will provide a better understanding of how opioids have affected the state of Texas as a whole.
On a more positive note, teen opioid misuse seems to be on dropping. Adult rates and deaths are the highest they have been in the U.S. but teen use has reached historic lows.
As reported in the Monitoring the Future survey by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, opioid use is around 2% among teens, down from 10.5 in 2003. With further efforts to combat opioid addiction the number of adults will hopefully soon follow.
