Public Health Surveillance and the Opioid Crisis

Abstract

The roles for public health surveillance are well established in the infectious disease surveillance literature; however, as they relate to noninfectious diseases and more specifically the current opioid epidemic, there is little standardization between states on what is being surveilled and there is a lack of definitions for some of the most important elements of the crisis, such as what constitutes an overdose death from opioids. Without standard definitions and processes, public health practitioners may develop response protocols based on incomplete data. As such, the opioid epidemic presents many challenges for public health surveillance by limiting the ability for case-based follow-up and stymies creation of a variety of shared indicators and metrics that make it difficult to capture the true burden of disease. In this chapter, the authors review prior surveillance activities related to substance use and share emerging consensus on opportunities to improve the surveillance among states and territories.