Ali Farihah, Law Justine, Russell Cayley, Imtiaz Sameer, Bayoumi Ahmed, Werb Dan, Rehm Jürgen
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Ontario Node, Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Matters (CRISM), Toronto, ON, Canada.
Front Public Health. 2025 Aug 27;13:1477539. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1477539. eCollection 2025.
Canada's overdose epidemic underscores the urgent need for high-quality, comprehensive, and timely national health data to inform evidence-based policies, population health management, and targeted intervention strategies. Using the province of Ontario, Canada, as a case study, this paper examines the current landscape of unregulated substance use health data, including both administrative and non-administrative health data sources. Health data on unregulated substance use in Ontario are fragmented, inconsistently collected, and poorly shared across organizations and jurisdictions. This creates significant barriers for researchers and decision makers in accessing timely and reliable information. Moreover, significant gaps persist in key areas, including prevalence estimates, treatment uptake, drug use profiles, marginalized populations, and disaggregated socio-demographic data. These deficiencies reflect and compound limitations at the national level, and hinder comprehensive analyses and informed decision-making, as well as progress toward coordinated national surveillance. To address these challenges, we propose several key recommendations: (1) standardize and integrate data to enhance consistency and interoperability among data sources; (2) improve data availability and accuracy to strengthen reporting mechanisms, increase transparency, and enable real-time monitoring of substance use trends, and (3) reduce barriers to data collection, analysis, and dissemination through enhanced collaboration and innovation. These strategies will improve provincial response efforts and contribute to building a national surveillance system that supports evidence-based decision-making to more effectively address the overdose crisis.
加拿大的药物过量流行凸显了迫切需要高质量、全面且及时的国家卫生数据，以支持基于证据的政策制定、人群健康管理和针对性干预策略。本文以加拿大安大略省为例，考察了无管制物质使用健康数据的现状，包括行政和非行政健康数据源。安大略省关于无管制物质使用的健康数据分散、收集不一致，且在各组织和辖区间共享不畅。这给研究人员和决策者获取及时可靠信息造成了重大障碍。此外，在关键领域仍存在重大差距，包括流行率估计、治疗利用率、药物使用概况、边缘化人群以及分类社会人口数据。这些不足反映并加剧了国家层面的局限性，阻碍了全面分析和明智决策，以及国家协调监测工作的进展。为应对这些挑战，我们提出了几项关键建议：（1）标准化和整合数据，以提高数据源之间的一致性和互操作性；（2）提高数据的可用性和准确性，以加强报告机制、提高透明度，并实现对物质使用趋势的实时监测；（3）通过加强合作与创新，减少数据收集、分析和传播的障碍。这些策略将改善省级应对措施，并有助于建立一个支持基于证据决策的国家监测系统，以更有效地应对药物过量危机。
