Individual and County-Level Disparities in Drug and Opioid Overdose Mortality for Hispanic Men in Massachusetts and the Northeast United States

Abstract

Background

This study aimed to identify individual- and county-level inequalities that may underlie disparities in drug overdose mortality for Hispanic men in Massachusetts and the broader Northeast region.

Methods

The study first used data from the State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System to compare the 635 Hispanic and 3593 Non-Hispanic (NH) White men who died of unintentional/undetermined opioid-related overdoses in Massachusetts in 2016–2018. Next, the study used 2015–2019 data from the Multiple Cause of Death online platform to: a) compare rates of drug overdose mortality in Hispanic versus NH White men in 54 counties in the Northeast United States; and b) examine associations with inequalities in poverty, educational attainment, unemployment, and uninsurance (from 2015–2019 American Community Survey data).

Results

At the individual level, in Massachusetts, Hispanic and NH White men who died of opioid-related overdose differed in terms of educational attainment, birthplace, urbanicity, substance use disorder treatment history, and specific drugs involved in death. At the county level, in the Northeast region, each one-standard deviation increase in the ratio of the Hispanic to NH White poverty rate was associated with a 27% increase in the ratio of Hispanic to NH White male overdose mortality; each one-standard deviation increase in the ratio of the Hispanic to NH White unemployment rate was associated with a 43% increase in the ratio of Hispanic to NH White male overdose mortality.

Conclusions

Findings underscore the importance of equitable interventions and efforts to address inequalities in social determinants of health for Hispanic populations in the Northeast.

Keywords:

• Latino
• Latinx
• disparity
• ethnicity
• substance use

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the United States Census Bureau for the data used in this manuscript. The manuscript content is solely the responsibility of the authors.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.