CDC releases overdose prevention data hub
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The agency “wants to ensure maximum transparency to empower patients, providers and other stakeholders as we continue our battle against the opioid epidemic,” said CDC Director Erica Schwartz.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an overdose data channel on Monday, combining three data sources and prevention resources into a one-stop shop.
“This approach provides users with more timely, more complete, and more actionable information,” Christine Mattson, deputy associate director of science in CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Overdose Prevention, told reporters on a Friday call previewing the release.
The website specifically combines data from the State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System, Drug Overdose Surveillance and Epidemiology System and National Vital Statistics System.
The site allows users to view graphics for both fatal and nonfatal drug overdose data. Users can adjust the graphics to display information for different states and download PNG or CSV files. For example, the website includes a graphic with preliminary 2025 data showing that 66 out of 100 overdose deaths are preventable.
“CDC wants to ensure maximum transparency to empower patients, providers and other stakeholders as we continue our battle against the opioid epidemic,” said the agency’s Director Erica Schwartz.
In addition to graphics, the platform contains information about overdose prevention strategies and other CDC programs.
The site does not include new overdose data and does not mean CDC is sunsetting old webpages, said Mattson.
“For communications and media partners, it can help teams more quickly understand the underlying data before communicating about overdose needs. For public health leaders, it can support faster situational awareness for other partners that can help establish a clear shared understanding of what the available data is showing,” she added.
“Ultimately the goal here is to help people spend less time finding and assembling the information and more time using it to inform prevention efforts,” said Mattson.
The overdose prevention data hub is part of CDC’s broader effort to modernize public health data infrastructure with user-centered design. Since the start of the Trump administration, CDC has terminated some datasets and data elements, according to a dataindex.us tracker.