Eau Claire County Launches Opioid Data Dashboard

The Eau Claire City-County Health Department has announced the launch of their comprehensive opioid data dashboard.

According to a press release, the new opioid data dashboard will give residents more information on the impact of opioid use in the county, as well as what harm reduction and prevention strategies the Health Department is using.

The dashboard is separated into three sections covering different topics. The first page covers the overall use of opioids, comparing rates of opioid usage in Eau Claire County with rates for the rest of Wisconsin and the rest of the country. That data also includes things like the number of opioid prescriptions that have been written and survey data regarding the perception of drug use by peers and parents.

The second page covers the consequences of opioid use. These numbers include suspected opioid overdoses, opioid-related hospital encounters, and opioid overdose deaths. Like the first page, the consequences section compares data from Eau Claire County to not only the rest of the state and country, but also the rest of the western Wisconsin region specifically.

The third page covers prevention and harm reduction efforts by the county. Under this data set, you can track the number of medications that have been disposed of, the amount of Narcan doses and fentanyl test strips that have been distributed, and educational and safety resources being offered. In this section, you can even see which medical providers in the area have accepted the most medication disposals and how many people are attending the educational workshops.

Officials hope that the dashboard will give local and state lawmakers a more nuanced understanding of how opioids are affecting the region, allowing them to create more policies to tackle more specific areas of the problem.