Results
Review data collected with community partner, course director, and course coordinator.
Analyze data (assistance available).
Create a summary of findings, including interpretation of your data and analysis (assistance available).
Tessa Keiser: Results
In preparation for starting the Adams County Suicide and Overdose Fatality Review committee, I started by synthesizing information from the OFR National Standards guide from the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the OFR Manual from the Ohio Department of Health. I also met with leaders of OFRs in Clermont and Hamilton counties to learn about their review process and the barriers they have encountered. These meetings have resulted in valuable insights as well as shared resources such as operational guidelines, meeting agendas, and annual reports from the other OFRs. All my current notes are in the attached document, along with drafts of a Statement of Purpose, Meeting Ground Rules, Member Invitation Letter, and Confidentiality Statement for the Adams County SOFR committee.
In addition, I have begun reviewing the death certificates at the Adams County Health Department and compiling a spreadsheet of data from the overdose and suicide deaths in 2022. There have been 12 overdose deaths and 9 suicide deaths reported thus far. 76% of the decedents were male, and the average age of decedents was 43. The majority of the deaths occurred at home. The majority of drug overdose deaths involved an opioid (fentanyl or heroin), and the most common method of suicide was gunshot. I am currently working on creating visual representations of these data to share at the first SOFR meeting.
This month, I finished compiling data from the death certificates of overdose and suicide fatalities in 2022 in Adams County. I then made graphs to visualize different variables of the deaths/decedents (see attached screenshot). These data can help community agencies better identify the highest-risk populations for overdose/suicide death in their future work.
Great and fascinating work on the FRC and data. Interesting to see both of these side by side. What is the data linking the two risk factors for these outcomes? Know it is a small N, but the increase in both in Oct and less in summer months interesting. Do you have any comparison data to other counties in Ohio or nationally? Keep up the great work.
Thanks for these good questions, I will try to address them in my next results post!
To put the data from Adams County overdose and suicide deaths into context, I am presenting some data here that I have collected from national, state, and county level sources on overdose/suicide fatalities. I will break it down by demographic factor.
Sex: Both in Ohio and the United States, overdose and suicide deaths are far more prevalent among males. For overdose deaths, this disparity has become more pronounced in the past 5 years or so, and the national ratio of male:female deaths is now greater than 2:1 (see attached figure, source). For suicide deaths, this disparity is even greater, with males comprising 80% of suicide deaths nationally (source). These ratios are approximately mirrored in the data from Adams County, where roughly 75% of both overdose and suicide deaths in 2022 were in males.
Age: In Ohio, the age group with the highest prevalence of overdose deaths in 2020 was 35-44 year-olds, followed closely by 25-34 year-olds, then by 45-54 year-olds (see attached figure, source). For suicide deaths nationally, the 25-34 year-olds have the highest prevalence, then the rates are nearly equal for ages 35-44, 45-54, and 55-64 (source). I used different age groupings in my data for Adams County because of the small number of cases, but in reviewing the data I note that the age spread does differ somewhat from the state/national spread. In Adams County, overdose deaths were relatively more prevalent both in younger (20-35 year-olds) and older (>50 year-olds) groups compared to the middle age group. For suicide deaths, Adams County had relatively higher rates in the middle age group (36-50 year-olds) compared to the national data.
Marital status: It was more difficult to find population-level data that included this factor, but one large study reviewing mortality data from 2008-2015 found that the risk of opioid overdose specifically was higher among widowed and divorced individuals than married ones (source). For suicide, studies have also shown an association between being single, divorced, or widowed and higher suicide risk (source). This increased risk association is stronger for men in particular. These general associations seem to be followed in the Adams County data, where a minority of the decedents for both overdose and suicide were married.
Education level: The same study cited above of mortality data from 2008-2015 found an association between education levels of less than high-school, high-school, and some college with higher risk for opioid overdose compared to people with a bachelor’s or master’s degree. In addition, the Clermont County OFR 2021 report showed similar results for overdose deaths to Adams County (see attached figure “Education Snapshot”) – a majority of decedents had a high-school education, and the largest minority category was less than HS level (19% for Clermont vs 27% for Adams). For suicide deaths, a similar association has been reported, with a college degree being associated with lower risk of suicide (source).
Month of year: For overdose deaths, I did not find good state or national level data on trends by month. From the Clermont County OFR 2021 report, there is no clear trend apparent to me in the average overdose deaths by month for 2018-2021 (see attached figure “Percentage of Deaths by Month”). For suicide deaths in Ohio, the data from 2017-2020 also does not show a clear trend, although there may be a modest decrease in the death rates in winter months (see attached figure, source). In Adams County, October 2022 was the worst month for combined overdose and suicide fatalities, but more data is needed to see if this is a recurring trend.