I can come up with a couple of possibilities. First, that some of the opioid
deaths are counted in other causes of death to get to the 2% number. The
second, is that there is another category of opioids beyond the "heroin",
"natural & semi synthetic, inc. oxycodone", "synthetic, inc. fentanyl", and
"methadone" buckets, where the decrease was less than 2% (i.e. an increase or a
decrease between 0 and 2% but a high n).
Brent
From: Robert Holmes <[email protected]>
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 2, 2019 12:16 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] Statistical poser (aka fact checking is hard)
Early this week I came across a recent press release from NM Dept of Health:
"Governor Martinez Announces Continued Improvement in Drug Overdose Death
Rankings". I've been tinkering round with opioid statistics, so thought it
might be worth fact checking the release. The results were… interesting. If
nothing else they've shown me how difficult it must be to communicate public
health statistics.
So here are some of the key figures from the release:
- New Mexico’s national ranking has improved from the second highest death
drug overdose death rate in the United States in 2014 to 17th highest in 2017
- New Mexico previously reported a 4 percent decline in death rates in 2017
due to overdose of commonly prescribed opioids such as oxycodone compared to
2016. In addition, deaths due to heroin decreased by 9 percent and deaths due
to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl decreased by 6 percent over the same time
period.
The first of these claims passed my sniff test: I know NM's ranking has been
improving, even though individual counties rank the wort in the nation. And
sure enough, if you pull the underlying CDC data you can confirm these exact
numbers (ignoring DC).
The second claim is the one that gave me pause. Those reductions in individual
opioids look kinda high. Yes, NM's ranking is improving but it's because our
rate is essentially stable while other states rocket past. And when I check the
above CDC data, yes the reduction in death rate appears to be about 2%
So there's the poser: if NM's reduction in opioid deaths (2016-2017) is 2%, how
can this be consistent with individual opioid reductions of 9% (heroin), 4%
(natural & semi synthetic, inc. oxycodone), and 6% (synthetic, inc. fentanyl)?
—Robert
P.S. I'll post my best guess later. Oh, and it's not that they omitted
methadone: deaths due to that are down 19% in the same
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