New WA Drug Death Dashboard Shows Alarming Data

The Washington State Department of Health's new Drug Overdose Dashboard (SUDORS) has been launched, containing a lot of data. But one category especially jumps out.

  Some shocking stats about intervention

The Washington State Department of Health's new dashboard contains a lot of information about ages, demographics, and other data concerning the state's exploding drug overdose rates.

One of the graphs concerns what is called "Potential Opportunities for Intervention."  The DOH describes that as a potential opportunity for linkage to care or life-saving action when it comes to an overdose death.

According to the chart, of all the fatal overdoses in 2022, 62 percent of them had at least one opportunity for a potentially life-saving intervention. The chart broke them down this way. These are the criteria that existed at the time of the death:

• bystander present 45%
• current or prior substance abuse disorder or treatment 8%
• decedents fatal drug use was witnessed 11%
• known history of drug use  8%
• known history of mental health diagnosis  23%
• recent release from an institutional setting 7%

It's alarming that in all of the recorded overdose deaths, 45 percent had someone there besides the user.