Integrating EMS Data with Hospital, Mortality, and Geographic Data to Identify Opioid Overdose Patterns Across Settings in New Jersey Communities

This project will utilize data on EMS activations for individuals with overdoses involving opioids to extend understanding of the evolving opioid overdose epidemic in NJ. The EMS data will be linked and integrated with an overdose dataset being developed under an existing iPHD project that brings together hospital/ED data from the Universal Billing system, NJ mortality data, and community level data from external sources. Integrating the EMS data will support a more comprehensive analysis that includes opioid-related adverse events that do not generate records in hospital and mortality data, providing a much more complete picture of overdose risk across NJ’s communities. Linkage of EMS and community data into integrated overdose datasets has been shown in other states to create a powerful resource for improving state, health system and community responses to the opioid epidemic. It will provide NJ with enhanced data resources for assessing and improving outcomes of policies and programs in a rapidly evolving environment, targeting interventions to populations at highest risk, understanding and addressing disparities, and better understanding health system interactions for people with OUD. We will identify consistent ways to identify and link relevant encounters across the data systems, and assess patterns of utilization and outcomes over time and by location. The project will provide the necessary methodological foundations for more-effective application of integrated state data to identify drivers of overdoses, develop policy solutions, identify and address disparities, evaluate outcomes of interventions, and help to build a learning health system approach to reducing the harmful effects of the opioid epidemic.