Report: Worcester County's opioid crisis more complex than West Virginia's
Photo/Courtesy/Flickr-Cindy Shelby
Worcester County is one of three counties in Massachusetts, eight across New England and a relative handful nationally to be impacted by the broadest array of opioids: prescription opioids, heroin, and prescription‐synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl.
The finding, published in the journal Rural Sociology, shows how wide-ranging the opioid epidemic has become in places like Worcester County. Data has shown prescription opioids flooded into cities like Worcester, Gardner and Athol in the years leading up to a spike in opioid-related deaths, and since then, the number of overdose deaths including fentanyl has soared.
Only a few dozen counties nationally of more than 3,000 hit what researchers called a syndemic, meaning it suffered from epidemics of all three types of opioid crises.
[Related: Mass. opioid deaths down 6% from last year]
In Massachusetts, Worcester County was joined by Hampden County, which includes Springfield, and Berkshire County on the New York border. Only five other counties in New England made that distinction, all in Connecticut: Windham County, which is part of the Worcester metropolitan area, Hartford County, Litchfield County, Middlesex County and New London County.
Most of the others are scattered in Maryland, Ohio, western Pennsylvania and remote parts of New Mexico. Relatively few parts of Kentucky and West Virginia, which have been hit hardest by the opioid epidemic, were determined to be hit by all three classifications of opioids, illustrating the complex nature of fighting the issue in places like Worcester County.
[Related: UMass Memorial's opioid drop-box gets 530 pounds of medications]
Researchers from Iowa State University, Syracuse University and the University of Iowa used U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overdose rates starting in 2004.
Opioid-related deaths in Worcester County have spiked this decade, from 79 in 2010 to 282 in 2018, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. The county also has a slightly disproportionate share of the state's opioid deaths, accounting for more than 14% of its overdoses but 12% of its population.
Opioid deaths have been down through the first three-quarters of 2019 throughout Massachusetts, according to the state Department of Public Health. The year-to-year decrease was 6%, with 1,460 opioid-related deaths either confirmed or estimated.
[Related: Opioid emergency room visits common in Central Mass.]
But fentanyl, a synthetic opioid far stronger than heroin and sometimes mixed with or substituted for it, was present in a higher proportion of cases than before: 93% of cases where a toxicology screen was done, the state said. That's up from 89% last year. Prescription opioids were present in 13% of fatalities.
Statewide, the number of confirmed or suspected opioid deaths peaked at 2,095 in 2016. By last year, that number fell 3% to 2,033.
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