Rapid Actionable Data for Opioid Response in Kentucky (RADOR-KY)

Opioid use disorder (OUD) remains a persistent public health crisis and epidemic. In spite of robust national, state, and local public health responses to the epidemic, opioid overdose deaths continue to increase; of the 91,799 drug overdose deaths in 2020, reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the majority, 68,630 (75%) involved opioids, a 38% increase from 2019. The opioid overdose death burden in Kentucky is even higher, with more 63% increase from 2019 (n=1,036) to 2020 (n=1,688). In the context of the dynamically changing opioid epidemic complicated by the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, agencies and organizations responsible for monitoring and improving the health of the population need timely (state and local) data to make critical decisions on resource allocation and targeted responses. Such decisions are typically related to a set of evidence-based practices (EBPs) aimed at preventing opioid overdose mortality. We will harness the infrastructure and methodological expertise at the University of Kentucky (UK) research centers (incl. the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center, the Center on Drug and Alcohol Research, and the Institute for Biomedical Informatics), along with the experience gained from our work on the HEALing Communities Study supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Overdose Data to Action project sponsored by the CDC. The specific aims of this projects are to establish the Rapid Actionable Data for Opioid Response in Kentucky (RADOR-KY)– an integrated, population-based, near-real time statewide OUD surveillance system that will ingest data from multiple state agencies and implement advanced informatics algorithms for fast data processing, data linkage, machine learning and predictive analytics to shorten the time between data capture and when analytical results are available to support opioid overdose prevention and control. RADOR-KY will have mobile and web-based applications to provide immediate dissemination and access to near-real time community or state level data, reports, and visual analytics. RADOR-KY End-User Advisory Group, including partners in state government and local communities, will guide the development of the RADOR-KY reporting and visualization functionality. RADOR-KY will establish a longitudinal dataset accessible thru the RADOR-KY portal and also shared within the HEAL Data Ecosystem. Programming code for implemented algorithms and web-based dashboards will be shared in a public repository to advance the efforts to mitigate the opioid epidemic in the U.S.