Black community sees largest increase in overdose deaths in over 2 decades

In 2020, Black individuals had the largest increase in overdose mortality rates for the first time compared with any other ethnic or racial group since 1999, according to a research letter published in in JAMA Psychiatry.

American Indian or Alaska Natives experienced the highest rate of overdose deaths in 2020 among all racial groups, Joseph R. Friedman, MPH, and Helena Hansen, MD, PhD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote.

Friedman and Hansen performed a cross-sectional study using anonymized public data from CDC’s Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research platform, as well as the National Center for Health Statistics, to calculate drug overdose death rates per 100,000 population by race and ethnicity from 1999 to 2020.

They found that overdose deaths among Black individuals rose to 36.8 per 100,000 individuals in 2020, from 24.7 in 2019. This was 16.3% higher than overdose deaths in white individuals at 31.6 per 100,000. Additionally, it was the largest percentage increase (48.8%) compared with Hispanic or Latino individuals (40.1%) and white individuals (26.3%).

In 2010, the rate for white individuals at 15.8 per 100,000 was double the rate for Black individuals at 7.9 per 100,000.

“These shifts reflect that Black communities have experienced higher annual percentage increases in overdose deaths compared with their white counterparts each year since 2012,” Friedman and Hansen wrote.

American Indian or Alaska Natives had the highest rate of overdose deaths in 2020, accounting for 41.4 per 100,000 people. This is 30.8% higher than in white individuals. In 2019, for the first time overdose mortality rates for American Indian or Alaska Natives (28.9 per 100,000) outpaced overdose rates in white individuals (25 per 100,000) for the first time.

The overdose mortality rate among Hispanic and Latino individuals was the lowest reported among any ethnic or racial group in 2020 — 17.3 per 100,000.

The researchers noted that increases in overdose mortality rates observed in 2020 were higher than in any year between 1999 and 2019.

“Drug overdose mortality is increasingly becoming a racial justice issue in the U.S.,” Friedman and Hansen wrote. “Our results suggest that drug overdose mortality has been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic.”