New interactive opioid tool: Explore opioid-related data in Ontario

Did you know that opioid-related emergency visits for 15–24 year olds in Ontario went up by 23% in just one year (2015 to 2016)? Is this true across Ontario? What are the statistics in your area?

Public Health Ontario recently released a new interactive online tool that allows you to explore data on opioid-related emergency department visits, hospitalizations and deaths in Ontario from 2003 to 2016. You can display trends across months or years and view the data according to the variables below:
• Age group and sex
• Public Health Unit or by Local Health Integration Network
• Type of opioid (death data only)

The tool allows figures, maps and data to be downloaded from the site. You can use this tool to better understand opioid harms in your jurisdiction and help inform prevention and early intervention programming.

To learn more about opioid trends across Canada, revisit our post, Assessing the Harms of Opioids, which outlines some of the key findings from Hospitalizations and Emergency Department Visits Due to Opioid Poisonings in Canada, a collaborative report from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction and the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

For information on how to use the opioid tool, you can access the webinar, Overdose Monitoring and Response for Ontario, hosted by the Provincial System Support Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on their Opioid Resource Hub.