Pennsylvania Emergency Department Drug Overdose Visits, County-Level Quarterly Trends

Pennsylvania county-level data tracks quarterly trends in emergency department visits for drug overdoses from state fiscal year 2015 onward. The dataset, published by data.pa.gov, is derived from syndromic surveillance systems that analyze medical data to detect potential public health threats. It includes rates for any drug overdose, any opioid overdose, and heroin overdose, broken down by demographic and geographic variables.

Use Cases

• Analyzing temporal trends in overdose rates by `Year`, `Quarter Date Start`, and `Overdose Type`.
• Mapping geographic disparities in overdose `Rate` using `County Name`, `Latitude`, and `Longitude`.
• Investigating demographic patterns in overdoses by `Age Group`, `Gender`, and `race_group`.
• Joining with other county-level datasets using `County FIPS Code` or `State FIPS Code` for broader public health analysis.

Strengths

• Includes detailed geographic identifiers like `County FIPS Code`, `Latitude`, and `Longitude`.
• Provides demographic breakdowns with columns for `Age Group`, `Gender`, and `race_group`.
• Covers a multi-year time series from state fiscal year 2015, updated as of 2025-10-27.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

data.pa.gov

Collection Method

Syndromic surveillance of emergency department visit data.

Time Range

State Fiscal Year 2015 to present (quarterly).

Freshness

Last updated 2025-10-27 18:02:17; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Pennsylvania, United States (county-level).