Delaware Opioid Metric Intelligence Project (DOMIP), 2013-2020 (ICPSR 38317)

1. The project does not involve primary research with human subjects. It uses an archival database that includes information on individuals, which we will aggregate to the census tract level. No individual-level analyses will be conducted.

2. The archival data are collected by Delaware's Division of Professional Regulation (DPR) Office of Controlled Substances (OCS) Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP); Division of Forensic Science (DFS) and the Criminal Justice Council's (CJC) Delaware Criminal Justice Information System (DELJIS).

3. The overdose death rates only include the deaths of persons with home addresses located within the state of Delaware. As such, persons who were marked as "homeless" in some manner or who overdosed in Delaware but did not have a current home address in the state were removed from our data and were not included in the rates calculated. This was done in an attempt to ensure the rates are based on accurate resident information that is consistent with the estimated population totals for census tracts from the American Community Survey and Census. Other missing data are denoted with a "NULL" designation.

4. For more information about this project, users can access the Delaware Opioid Metric Intelligence Project (DOMIP) website.

5. Steps used to Calculate Age-Adjusted Rates*:

   • Step 1: Initial Rate Calculation (using yearly American Community Survey data) Rate = (Overdose Deaths per Age Group per Census Tract / Total Age Group Population per Census Tract) * 100,000
   • Step 2: Creating the Weight (using 2010 Census data for standardization) Weight = Total Age Group Population of DE (2010) / Total Population of DE (2010)
   • Step 3: Applying Weight Rate Calculated in Step 1 (by Census Tract) * Weight Calculated in Step 2
   • Step 4: Collapsing Data to Census Tracts Once the age-group rates are weighted, this data is collapsed to the census tract thereby adding the weighted values of each age group into a summed total age-adjusted rate by census tract.
   *For more information on age-adjusted rates, see: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/13357.

US 2010 Census: The collection of census information is a requirement under the US Constitution and this data were collected for the first time in 1790. Presently, the US Census Bureau collects data through questionnaires every ten years to determine how many people live in the country at that time. Information is collected on each person living in a household. (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/about/why.html). The census is free to access and provides population statistics for cities, counties, states, and the entire nation. Variables are available for download by US census tract.

Criminal Incident and Arrest Data: The Delaware Criminal Justice Information System (DELJIS) provides data on criminal incidents reported to the police or observed by the police and arrests conducted by Delaware law enforcement to DOMIP. Addresses and Names fields are cleaned using regular expressions and addresses geocoded using ESRI ArcGIS address locators and mapped to census tracts (the majority of the incident data was already geocoded). Cases with home addresses outside the state of Delaware or that were determined to be homeless are excluded. Drug crimes were identified via the provided crime codes that are also used to report to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Total arrests include all types of arrests (including non-serious offenses, in contrast to other crime reports: https://sac.delaware.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/64/2017/04/Crime-in-Delaware-2009-2013-min.pdf). For 2013 to 2017 we report total arrest and drug arrest rates; however, for 2018 to 2020 we report total criminal incident and drug incident rates.

Overdose (OD) Death Data: Delaware's Division of Forensic Science (DFS) provides overdose death data to DOMIP. Overdose death data come from postmortem toxicology reports conducted by medical examiners from the state of Delaware. The medical examiners investigate and certify the cause and manner of death of those who die within the state's boundaries and fall under the statutory jurisdiction of the office. Suspected overdose deaths identified by a medical examiner are then subjected to further toxicological examination. The DFS' Forensic Toxicology Unit works in tandem with pathologists in the ME Unit to determine what substances were present in the decedent at the time of death. The toxicology report is then reviewed by the assigned pathologist and a cause and manner of death is determined. Assignment of decedents to census tracts was based on the home address of the decedents. Cases with home addresses outside the state of Delaware or that were determined to be homeless were excluded. Addresses were geocoded using ESRI ArcGIS address locators and, finally, mapped to census tracts.

American Community Survey: "The American Community Survey (ACS) helps local officials, community leaders, and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities. It is the premier source for detailed population and housing information about our nation" (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/). In 2010, the ACS replaced the long form of the decennial census as the only national source of socio-economic data for smaller areas like neighborhoods (census tracts - DOMIP uses census tracts as proxies for neighborhoods). The ACS is a constantly ongoing survey that offers a wide variety of socio-economic information (the variables we used are listed below).