Through my work with the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ), I worked as a data analyst for the Wisconsin Overdose Fatality Review (OFR) project. OFR is a locally based, multi-disciplinary process for understanding the risk factors and circumstances leading to fatal overdoses and identifying opportunities to prevent future overdoses. The basis of OFR – like all fatality reviews – is that overdose fatalities could have been prevented with the right action, timing, intervention, and/or response.

Working in partnership with staff from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) and local health departments across the state, I developed a dashboard using flexdashboard tools in R. The dashboard brings together a variety of overdose and drug-related data that was previously siloed in different agencies, including fatal and non-fatal overdose, law enforcement drug seizures and arrests, and prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) data.