slides: Worcester Heroin Overdoses by the Numbers

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Nicholas Handy, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

Ripples were sent through the Worcester community after learning that nine, potentially 10 citizens had died of suspected heroin overdoses in the first week of August.

While the city of Worcester has declared a public health advisory and is doing everything that they can to help prevent heroin overdoses from happening in the city, public health officials say that these overdoses are still happening at an alarming rate.

“Over the course of the weekend – from noon on Friday to Sunday evening – we had an additional 10 overdoses,” said Derek Brindisi, the Worcester City Director of Public Health. “We don’t yet know what percentage of them resulted in deaths. This follows the nine, potentially ten deaths in the first week of August. We are currently working with all of our stakeholders to try to get to the bottom of this.”

Multiple calls were made into the Worcester Police Department to determine the most updated figures for Worcester but no calls were returned.

Check out the slideshow below for the most up-to-date statistical information on heroin overdose 911 calls, deaths, and more.

Finding Trends

Because the data of heroin overdoses typically lags – some of the data is about a year or two behind – it is hard to find trends signaling that heroin overdoses are on the rise. With that being said, at least one trend found in 2012 can be quite startling when looking at the most recent figures for Worcester.

In 2012, it was the first year that these figures continued to increase in Autumn from Summer, which is inconsistent with the trends of previous years. While having a gap from Autumn 2012 to now is troubling, the trend may be the start of when heroin overdoses in Worcester began to rise.

And while looking back on years previous can help to find patterns and trends, looking at real time cases in places like hospitals is much more challenging due to the wealth of overdose cases that present on a day-to-day basis.

“Unfortunately, drug overdoses are a pretty common occurrence in hospitals,” said Lynn Farrugia, a Fellow in Medical Toxicology with UMass Memorial in Worcester. “I think that it is hard to find trends, especially when only asking a single physician. It makes it challenging to find trends and changes because so many physicians deal with so many overdoses everyday.”

Working Together

Compiling data on heroin overdoses and related deaths is something that takes a lot of work from a lot of different people. A mixture of state and local forces, public health officials, police officers, and hospitals, are all needed to correctly determine the correct number of heroin overdoses and deaths.

In Worcester alone, police, hospitals, and public health officials all have their roles to play, both in data collection and in helping to prevent future overdoses from occurring.

The city of Worcester wants to get to the bottom of the heroin epidemic by working with community stakeholders in partners. After seeing around 300 heroin overdose 911 calls from January 1st to August 1st, Worcester Police reported 33 heroin overdose 911 calls from August 1st to August 7th, something city officials say is unacceptable.

“For the three largest cities – Worcester being one of them – data collection is completed more at a local level than a state level, which is why the 485 deaths reported earlier in the year didn’t include Worcester,” said Brindisi. “We are going to continue to engage our community and work with everyone involved. We want to find new and innovative ways to mitigate heroin use.”