Understanding When and Where Overdoses Occur: A Data-Driven Framework for Community Response in Urban Areas.

Background: Drug overdoses continue to plague communities. Despite the crisis, it is difficult for local city and/or county-level officials to make timely, data-driven decisions on prevention and intervention strategies. Objective: The purpose of this manuscript is to provide local government decision-makers with a blueprint for the collection and analysis of readily available jurisdictional data on drug overdoses. Methods: A total of 7,102 drug overdose calls for service were placed to the City of Detroit 911 center in 2022. These calls were examined for temporal and spatial clustering using ArcGIS Pro. Findings: Overdose incidents were more likely to occur on Saturday and Sunday in the hours from 8:00 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. There was a seasonal trend, with most overdose calls occurring during the summer months. A contiguous hot spot that measured 7 square miles was also identified in the downtown area, which accounted for nearly 17% of the calls for service. Conclusions: The findings highlighted the fact that overdose incidents were not randomly distributed but were concentrated in specific times and locations. This suggested the potential for strategic resource allocation to maximize impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]