New dashboard makes overdose and death data more accessible and actionable

DOH is replacing the county and Accountable Communities of Health (ACHs) opioid overdose dashboards on its external website with a single dashboard. The new dashboard will include opioid overdose, hospitalizations, and deaths by county and by ACH, just like the previous Tableau dashboards. It will use the same data sources, including death certificate and hospital discharge data.

Data on the new dashboard is updated through 2022, and cocaine was added to the list of drugs reported. The new dashboard will present the information in an easier-to-understand format, similar to our COVID-19 dashboard.

The goal of the change in dashboards is to make data DOH provides more accessible—and therefore, actionable—to the public. This dashboard can be used to examine opioid morbidity and mortality due to drug overdose to raise awareness of the opioid epidemic among Washington state residents. Data will be updated quarterly.

Like all publicly available DOH data, the dashboard will suppress small numbers to avoid inadvertently sharing personal health information. Local health partners who use this data can get the entire data set through the password-protected, internal opioid dashboard. If you don’t already have access, you will need to get permission. The internal opioid dashboard was developed in collaboration with DOH employees, LHJs, and tribal partners.

Contact the Center for Data Science dashboard team at CDS-Dashboards@doh.wa.gov with questions or requests for access to the internal dashboard.