Across the country, more people are dying from drug overdoses than motor vehicle accidents, according to a new report from the Trust of America's Health.
The report measures fatal injury rates and Indiana ranked 15th for its rate of overdose deaths. 16 per 100,000 people in Indiana died from an overdose between 2011 and 2013.
The HIV outbreak in Scott County exposed the widespread abuse of the prescription opioid Opana and other counties in Indiana are reporting high rates of Hepatitis C, also linked to intravenous drug use.
Nationally, half of all overdose deaths are linked to prescription drugs.
"I think there's a nature out there to think that heroin and cocaine and some of those hard, illegal drugs are causing a lot of deaths where in reality it's something that's in someone's medicine cabinet that's doing a lot of the harm as well," says Albert Lang, Trust for America's Health senior communications manager.
Jessica Skiba, an epidemiologist for Indiana State Department of Health, says the prescription drug epidemic has been caused, in part, by the inappropriate prescribing of opioids for chronic pain.
"A lot of times anecdotally we'll hear, ‘I had surgery and I received a prescription for some opiate and just kept taking them as prescribed by my doctor and then later became addicted to the painkillers,'" Skiba says. "Then there's also a direct link to the heroin overdose when the individuals aren't able to have any more of their prescription; they turn to something else that would be a similar drug."
Skiba says efforts are underway to measure the number of opioids prescribed and filled in the state so the state health department can track trends and identify inappropriate prescriptions or when people obtain prescriptions from multiple doctors.
And the report doesn't only measure overdose deaths.
This is the second time the Trust of America's Health has measured injury death rates. Their first study published in 2012 compared motor vehicle deaths and overall poisoning deaths, which included drug overdoses.
The new report breaks down injuries into motor vehicle accidents, drug overdoses, suicide, homicide, child maltreatment and falls.
Lang says the aging Baby Boomer generation is leading to an increased number of fatal falls.
"They're falling, they're, unfortunately, getting seriously hurt and dying," Lang says. "That's one thing that's going to increase as more of the baby boomers age into kind of the elderly status."
Skiba says the state is working with physicians to develop fall prevention efforts for the aging population.
"We know that a third of older adults, age 65 and older, will fall each year and of those that fall, only half of them have discussed it with their physician," Skiba says.
Skiba says doctors can conduct a gait test and recommend their patients meet with a physical therapist, add calcium and Vitamin D to their diets and manage their prescriptions to monitor side effects that could increase the risk of falling.
