2024/02/06 by Lucas H. McCabe, McCabe, Lucas H., Naoki Masuda +9
Medicine · Psychology · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Mental Health Research Topics #Opioid Use Disorder Treatment #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2402.03924
openalex publication_date 2024/02/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a nation-wide network analysis of non-fatal opioid-involved overdose journeys in the United States. Leveraging a unique proprietary dataset of Emergency Medical Services incidents, we construct a journey-to-overdose geospatial network capturing nearly half a million opioid-involved overdose events spanning 2018-2023. We analyze the structure and sociological profiles of the nodes, which are counties or their equivalents, characterize the distribution of overdose journey lengths, and investigate changes in the journey network between 2018 and 2023. Our findings include that authority and hub nodes identified by the HITS algorithm tend to be located in urban areas and involved in overdose journeys with particularly long geographical distances.