SPOKANE, Wash. — Washington's Department of Health launched a new tool to track overdoses across the state. The goal is to help communities reduce overdose deaths.
The new dashboard features statewide, regional and county level data on drug related hospitalizations and deaths. The data currently ranges from 2016 to 2021.
In Spokane County, the dashboard shows 111 fatal overdoses were reported in 2016. By 2021, the total went up to 149. But, hospitalizations saw a significant decrease. There were 635 in 2016. That went down to 460 in 2021.
This is a troubling trend to Spokane Regional Health District's Division Director of Treatment Services Misty Challinor
"It breaks my heart, that this is where we're at, and our world in our community," Challinor said.
She said the new dashboard is a tool that will help guide local response to drug use here in Spokane.
"I think it's wonderful that they've got it so easily and readily available," Challinor said. "If we can work together as a community, then we can definitely make an impact and at least hopefully, start seeing a slower rate with those numbers and potentially a decrease."
The data is updated quarterly from sources including death certificates and hospital discharge information.
Across the state, data shows an upward trend of drug and opioid hospitalizations and deaths. Challinor attributes some of these totals to the COVID pandemic.
"The opioid crisis has never stopped and amid the COVID pandemic, it just continued to be exacerbated exponentially by the isolation that so many people felt and everything that our world was going through," Challinor said.
The dashboard is one of many tools SRHD uses to track overdoses in our community. But this site is available to the public with an easy-to-understand" format for all.
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