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Statewide database helps track overdose deaths in Pennsylvania

6 min read

Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter

Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter

Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone

Last November, Washington County officials noticed a disturbing trend of people who were dying of drug overdoses just days – sometimes even hours – after leaving the county jail or mandated treatment programs.

Their tolerance levels to opioids had been lowered while incarcerated, Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone said, so when they attempted to use the large quantities of heroin as they had in the past, their bodies succumb to the drugs.

The information from the string of overdose deaths was collected by the University of Pittsburgh’s Overdose Prevention Research Program and organized to produce a statistical database in which Vittone, other law enforcement officials and county drug counselors are now using to find a solution for the drug epidemic that has ravaged the area. In response, the county has implemented a pilot program in which treatment is offered at the jail and some inmates who are about to be released are given an injection of Vivitrol that blocks the euphoric feeling of opioids.

Without that robust data, Vittone said, they never would have been able to find local trends in the opioid crisis.

“We were putting out fires,” Vittone said. “The problem is you’re not working from data and evidence.”

Pitt’s research program recently developed a website to track overdose deaths and detailed information of the victims – excluding their names – to learn more about the epidemic. The project began a couple years ago when Allegheny County Medical Examiner Karl Williams and Jan Pringle, director of Program Evaluation and Research Unit at Pitt, wanted to find a way to standardize overdose data and make it more accessible to the public. Since July 2016, 22 other county coroners from across Pennsylvania now regularly supply data from fatal overdoses they investigate to the Overdose Free PA website.

Through the process, Lynn Mirigian, director of the Overdose Prevention Research Program at Pitt, said law enforcement and counselors are able to target areas to concentrate treatment or arm police officers with naloxone, the antidote that reverses the effects of an overdose.

“People are dying here, so we need to have naloxone (there) to save lives,” Mirigian said. “The DAs like to see these trends to see how drugs move through counties. It’s helpful not to see just your county but other ones as well.”

It has also become an important resource for families. The Washington County Opioid Overdose Task Force has its own page on the Overdose Free website, along with important information about how to find treatment and what to do if someone is experiencing an overdose.

But the most popular aspect is the statistical database, which goes back five years and offers a detailed view of the epidemic.

Still, only one-third of the coroners in the state’s 67 counties are participating. Mirigian said each coroner has been contacted and there are various reasons, including staffing constraints, for not providing the data.

Eleven coroners from across Southwestern Pennsylvania are participating in the project, with the lone exceptions being the coroners from Greene and Washington counties.

Neither Washington County Coroner Tim Warco nor Greene County Coroner Greg Rohanna could be reached for comment. Susan Shanaman, a legislative liaison with the Pennsylvania State Coroners Association did not response to a message seeking comment.

One of the coroners who is importing overdose data to Overdose Free PA is Ken Bacha of Westmoreland County. His office was one of the first to join the project, which he said has been helpful in identifying deadly batches of heroin and the more dangerous synthetic versions of fentanyl and carfentanyl.

“There was nothing in the state that did that. There is no mandatory reporting across the state,” he said. “The best way to fight a war is know who your enemy is, know where to concentrate our efforts.”

Producing the information is time-consuming, Bacha said, and a deputy who works the midnight shift usually compiles and uploads it to the website during slow evenings.

“This was a voluntary thing, but we jumped on it early,” Bacha said. “We’ve been contributing and we’ve spent lots of time and lots of hours. It’s getting to be more difficult.”

Smaller coroner offices have fewer workers to produce such data. It is still important for law enforcement and public officials to review, said Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Patrick Trainor, who is based in Philadelphia.

“It allows us to dictate where our enforcement resources should be directed and public health people where (naloxone) should go and where the treatment should go,” Trainor said.

The DEA also has published an annual report the past three years giving detailed information on overdose deaths. Some coroners from rural counties have pushed back, he said, but unlike the Overdose Free PA project, the DEA has subpoena power to compel those officials to produce their data.

“It’s been challenging. I know a lot of coroners, quite frankly, find our report to be quite burdensome and they feel like they don’t need to respond to us,” Trainor said. “It’s been difficult in doing that. We also have some areas that don’t want to have their numbers known. Some counties that are rural would like to think they don’t have a problem, and that’s not the case for us.”

Each county faces different problems, but the Overdose Free PA website allows the DEA and the public to see in real time whether a deadly batch is moving through a certain part of the state.

“To understand, address and define it, we have to know what the issue is,” Trainor said. “We can’t if we don’t know.”

That has helped Vittone’s office, not only in targeting drug overdoses, he said, but using the website as a tool to get all government entities and local organizations working together.

“None of us can take on this epidemic on our own,” Vittone said. “The only way we can take action and make the needle to go the other way is to get every agency in action and start talking about it.”

For more information about the project or to review overdose data, go to www.overdosefreepa.pitt.edu.

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