Opioid Data Lab: Understanding Overdose through Scientific Innovation focuses on developing a methodology for classifying drug poisoning deaths (i.e., drug overdose deaths) as single- versus polydrug poisoning deaths and developing analytical tools that can be used by surveillance epidemiologists and researchers.
In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), in collaboration with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, developed a methodology for analysis of literal text on U.S. electronic death certificates to identify specific drugs mentioned with involvement (DMI). The DMI methodology uses a drug search term list (including drug names, metabolites, and misspellings cross-walked to generic drug names) and contextual phrases to capture specific drugs identified by medical examiners/coroners as contributing to drug poisoning deaths and listed on the death certificate. To date, the use of the DMI methodology has been limited to a few NCHS publications tracking changes in drugs most frequently involved in U.S. drug overdose deaths. Our program is built on existing DMI methodology to develop a polydrug poisoning death classification framework and an analytical toolbox (including programming code, guide, test dataset) to facilitate drug-involved reporting and research.
