Measuring the Burden of Opioid-Related Mortality in Ontario, Canada

Opioid overdose is a leading public health problem across Canada that continues to evolve, particularly as clandestinely-produced opioids enter the market (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2017). In 2014, we published a study that found that 1 in 170 deaths in 2010 was related to opioids, and that this varied by age (Gomes et al., 2014). Given the shifting opioid landscape across Canada, we sought to update this analysis to quantify the burden of opioid-related death in Ontario between 2000 and 2015.

To accomplish this, we conducted a cross-sectional study of opioid-related deaths in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. We obtained data on all deaths where prescribed or illicit opioids were determined to be a contributing factor from the Office of the Chief Coroner (Dhalla et al., 2009; Gomes et al., 2011), and used the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) Registered Persons Database to determine the total number of deaths from any cause over the study period.