University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
Delaware Division of Forensic Science, Wilmington, DE, USA.
J Community Health. 2019 Apr;44(2):272-283. doi: 10.1007/s10900-018-0583-0.
The current opioid epidemic continues to challenge us in new and potentially troubling ways. For example, research today finds more overdose deaths occurring in rural, rather than urban, geographic areas. Yet, studies have often ignored heterogeneities within these spaces and the neighborhood variations therein. Using geodemographic classification, we investigate neighborhood differences in overdose death rates by geographical areas to further understand where and among what groups the problem might be most concentrated. For deaths between 2013 and 2016, we find significant variation in rates among neighborhoods, defined by their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. For example, overdose death rates vary up to 13-fold among neighborhoods within geographic areas. Our results overall show that while the rural or urban classification of a geographic area is important in understanding the current overdose problem, a more segmented analysis by neighborhood's socio-economic and demographic makeup is also necessary.
当前的阿片类药物泛滥问题继续以新的、可能令人困扰的方式向我们提出挑战。例如，今天的研究发现，农村地区的过量用药死亡人数比城市地区更多。然而，这些研究往往忽略了这些空间内部的异质性以及其中的邻里差异。我们利用地理人口统计学分类方法，研究了地理区域内因邻里差异导致的过量用药死亡率，以进一步了解问题最集中的地点和人群。对于 2013 年至 2016 年期间的死亡人数，我们发现，根据社会经济和人口统计学特征定义的邻里之间的死亡率存在显著差异。例如，在地理区域内的不同邻里之间，过量用药死亡率相差可达 13 倍。我们的研究结果总体表明，尽管一个地理区域的农村或城市分类对于理解当前的过量用药问题很重要，但按邻里的社会经济和人口结构进行更细分的分析也是必要的。
