Smarter use of data (and AI) could bring down opioid deaths

Politico June 26, 2024
By Ruth Reader

There may be no phrase in the English language that makes the eyes glaze over faster than “public health data infrastructure.”

But any big effort to tackle urgent health problems requires data, and lots of it. A recent multi-year study from the National Institutes of Health tried to find out if county health departments could make progress against America’s horrifying opioid epidemic if they had much more robust data — the kind of information that would help them see the factors contributing to their local addiction problem.

The bad news: Overall, the $350 million federal effort, called HEALing (Help End Addiction Longterm) Communities — which aimed to drive down opioid deaths by 40 percent — failed to significantly reduce fatal...

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