Opioid overdose is a significant public health issue, with people who inject drugs (PWID) a key risk group. However, there is little contemporary information on opioid overdose incidence in Australia and limited evidence of the impact of factors affecting incidence among PWID. Further evidence on the risk and protective factors of an opioid overdose will help determine how to prevent these overdoses from occurring.

In this seminar, Penny will provide a preliminary examination of the range of information available on opioid overdose in the SuperMIX study, Australia’s largest and only active cohort study of PWID. She will explore a range of self-report and linked data including data collected on ambulance attendances (through VACIS), emergency department presentations (through the Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset) and deaths (through the National Death Index). Findings around opioid overdose incidence will be presented along with predictors of overdose (socio-demographic characteristics, alcohol and other drug use, and health service-related factors) and some preliminary consideration of interrelations between different data sources.