Fatal Opioid Overdoses by Historical and Contemporary Neighborhood-Level Structural Racism🔓

JAMA Health Forum 

This cross-sectional study of 796 census tracts prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (2017-2019) and 792 census tracts during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022) in Chicago, Illinois, assessed the extent to which there is a spatial association between neighborhood-level structural racism and opioid-involved overdose deaths. Researchers found that neighborhoods exposed to high levels of structural racism in the past (historical redlining) and present (contemporary segregation) had the highest fatal overdose incidence rates before the COVID-19 pandemic (2017-2019). Neighborhoods that experienced high levels of contemporary racism had the highest fatal overdose incidence rates during the pandemic (2020-2022). 

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