COLUMBUS, Ohio — The state of Ohio recently launched an online dashboard that can be used as a resource to combat the growing epidemic. 

Ohio recently launched the Integrated Behavioral Health Dashboard tool as a resource to combat the growing epidemic of drug overdoses, deaths and more. There were more than 5,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021 and the dashboard breaks down numbers by year and county, so organizations like Maryhaven can target areas where addiction and drug use may be an ongoing issue.

“We can track where we're seeing these types of substances pop up and give us opportunities to hopefully get out and get messaging out for prevention, get more of our workers out to be able to help those who are in need and be more of a collective force,” said Oyauma Garrison who serves as the CEO of Maryhaven. 

The data shared on the site only goes up to 2021 and can be seen on a month-to-month breakdown. Dustin Mets with CompDrug said that long-term data can allow for their organization’s initiatives and resources to be more streamlined.

State of Ohio Integrated Behavioral Health Dashboard. (Courtesy Data Ohio)

“Having the long term longitudinal data, we would know what interventions are working to use and where we strategically apply them or tactically apply them on the day to day an opportunity in this data for an intervention,” said Mets, who serves as the CEO of CompDrug. 

Mets is also the President of the Ohio Association for Treatment of Opioid Dependence and says that the dashboard will not only help Ohioans county by county, but can reinforce collaboration between states.

“What do we do?” said Mets. “Well, we look at other states, we look at what they've been doing. They may be further along or they may be looking at us. The data really allows us to both share information as well as pull in ideas.”

The opioid dashboard is up and running and will get updated monthly with new numbers. It does not currently have the data and figures from 2022.