JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Overdose Fatality Review (OFR) is an important public health tool for shaping overdose prevention strategies in communities. However, OFR teams review only a few cases at a time, which typically represent a small fraction of the total fatalities in their jurisdiction. Such limited review could result in a partial understanding of local overdose patterns, leading to policy recommendations that do not fully address the broader community needs.

Objective:

This study explores the potential to enhance conventional OFRs with a data dashboard, incorporating visualizations of touchpoints—events that precede overdoses—to highlight prevention opportunities.

Methods:

We conducted two focus groups and a survey of OFR experts to characterize their information needs and design a real-time dashboard that tracks and measures decedents' past interactions with services in Indiana. Experts (N=27) were engaged, yielding insights on essential data features to incorporate, and providing feedback to guide the development of visualizations.

Results:

Findings highlight the importance of showing decedents' interactions with health services (emergency medical services) and the justice system (incarcerations). Emphasis was also placed on maintaining decedent anonymity, particularly in small communities, and the need for training OFR members in data interpretation. The developed dashboard summarizes key touchpoint metrics, including prevalence, interaction frequency, and time intervals between touchpoints and overdoses, with data viewable at the county and state levels. In an initial evaluation, the dashboard was well received for its comprehensive data coverage and its potential for enhancing OFR recommendations and case selection.

Conclusions:

The Indiana touchpoints dashboard shows the potential of linking administrative and mortality data, providing local OFRs with a broader perspective onto overdose risk factors, and informing policy recommendations with quantitative data. However, fully integrating the dashboard into OFR practices will likely require training teams in data interpretation and decision-making.