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Community-based Naloxone Coverage Equity for the Prevention of Opioid Overdose Fatalities in Racial/Ethnic Minority Communities in Massachusetts and Rhode Island
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5 2022
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Source: Addiction. 117(5):1372-1381
[PDF-752.99 KB]
Details:
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Alternative Title:Addiction
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Personal Author:
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Description:Background and aims:
Opioid-related overdose death rates continue to rise in the United States, especially in racial/ethnic minority communities. Our objective was to determine if US municipalities with high percentages of non-white residents have equitable access to the overdose antidote naloxone distributed by community-based organizations.
Methods:
We used community-based naloxone data from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the Rhode Island Non-Pharmacy Naloxone Distribution program for 2016–2018. We obtained publicly available opioid-related overdose death data from Massachusetts and the Office of the State Medical Examiners in Rhode Island. We defined the naloxone coverage ratio as the number of community-based naloxone kits received by a resident in a municipality divided by the number of opioid-related overdose deaths among residents, updated annually. We used a Poisson regression with generalized estimating equations to analyze the relationship between the municipal racial/ethnic composition and naloxone coverage ratio. To account for the potential nonlinear relationship between naloxone coverage ratio and race/ethnicity, we created B-splines for the percentage of non-white residents; and for a secondary analysis examining the percentage of African American/Black and Hispanic residents. The models were adjusted for the percentage of residents in poverty, urbanicity, state, and population size.
Results:
Between 2016–2018, the annual naloxone coverage ratios range was 0–135. There was no difference in naloxone coverage ratios among municipalities with varying percentages of non-white residents in our multivariable analysis. In the secondary analysis, municipalities with higher percentages of African American/Black residents had higher naloxone coverage ratios, independent of other factors. Naloxone coverage did not differ by percentage of Hispanic residents.
Conclusions:
There appear to be no municipal-level racial/ethnic inequities in naloxone distribution in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, USA.
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Source:
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Pubmed ID:34825427
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Pubmed Central ID:PMC8983544
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