Opioid Death Rate Higher in Rural Communities

Rural counties have seen a disproportionate jump in deaths from prescription-drug overdoses in the past 15 years, increasing at a pace three times that of the nation’s most urban counties. The death rate in counties with cities with a population of 10,000 or fewer has exceeded the death rate in the core counties of large cities (1 million or more) since about 2007.

About three out of four of all U.S. deaths caused by prescription drugs in 2014 were from opioid pain killers.

Rural counties saw an average increase in prescription drug deaths of about 9 percent a year from 1999 to 2014. By contrast, central counties of large metropolitan areas saw the death rate climb by less than 3 percent per year on average over the same period.

An analysis of Centers for Disease Control age-adjusted mortality data shows that, in general terms, the more rural a county, the greater the increase in its prescription drug-overdose death rate from 1999 to 2014. The exception to the rule is counties on the fringes of the nation’s largest metropolitan counties. There, in the suburbs of large cities, the death-rate didn’t climb as fast compared to the overall trend.

Prescription medication accounts for about half of all drug deaths in the U.S., according to the Department of Health and Human Services.  Source: The Daily Yonder