HD4A: Trends in Fatal and Nonfatal Opioid-Related Overdoses among Pregnant and Postpartum Women Living in NJ

The goal of this study is to improve maternal health outcomes during dual national maternal health and opioid crises by providing needed evidence on the impact of postpartum Medicaid coverage extensions for birthing people with opioid use disorder (OUD). Data limitations (i.e., data deficiencies, barriers to data access, and data fragmentation) often hamper efforts to detect even basic prevalence of OUD and overdose among pregnant and postpartum individuals, let alone to identify correlative and causal factors, all of which are crucial for developing responsive policies.

Our proposal leverages novel linkages in the NJ Integrated Population Health Data (iPHD) to fill these knowledge gaps. Using this data, we will be able to Identify trends in opioid-related overdoses among NJ pregnant and postpartum people, as well as evaluate characteristics of birthing people who have overdose events in order to inform policymakers and stakeholders.