Arizona will soon have a better idea of what’s causing people to die from drug overdoses. This week, Gov. Doug Ducey signed a new law that requires each fatality to be investigated.
Dr. Cara Christ says there are major gaps in data about overdose deaths — questions like could a death have been prevented with a medication like naloxone? Was it the result of illegal access to prescription drugs? Did someone die because of one drug or multiple?
“Right now we don’t have a good system for capturing all drug fatalities and being able to classify those,” said Christ, head of the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Her agency is tasked with setting up a team of experts to review every overdose death reported in the state. It’s modeled off of a panel created in the early 1990s to investigate childhood fatalities.
Christ said they hope the new data will lead to policy recommendations.
“I think it will give us a much better picture of the types of drugs that are involved in drug overdoses and what happens at the scene of a death. And that’s what we are missing right now," Christ said.
Deaths from opioids increased more than 40 percent in Arizona between 2005 and 2015.
