Prescription Drug Abuse In The United States
What Should We Do To Prevent Prescription Drug Abuse?
In fact, I wanted to gain a better understanding of the prescription drug abuse/opioid crisis, so I analyzed the amount of obtaining a prescription/opioid in a large subset of the data on prescribers like specialties who have authorized the count of each drug are people used. I analyzed and visualized all of the available prescription drug abuse/opioid crisis by https://github.com/IBM/predict-opioid-prescribers/tree/master/data
My primary goal is to perform an exploratory data analysis on the prescription drug abuse/opioid crisis and gather insights into its sources.
Graph: Opioid Prescribers by State
Insight: Opioid Prescribers by State Based on the map above
If we look specifically on the map at the TOP 12 states for prescription drug abuse that contain four spot areas each area represent the line of the impact of opioid. States in the red areas that show the biggest impact on drug abuse. States in the orange areas that show the medium impact drug abuse. States in the green and blue areas that show a lower impact on drug abuse.
Graph: Opioid_Prescribers Vs Total_Prescribers
Insight: Opioid_Prescribers Vs Total_Prescribers
The abuse of prescription drugs is a common problem in the United States among teens and adult people. Some people use prescriptions as medications, but some people use them as recreational drugs. Millions of dollars are spent to prevent prescription drug abuse, and pharmaceutical companies could make medications have less addictive chemicals. It may take more than is needed, and people may become addicted to prescription drugs.
When Does It Occur?
Prescription drug abuse occurs when people who have problems with pain and anxiety take more medications than prescribed, or they take medications not prescribed. People think that if one pill helps, two or more benefits more. Other people try to prevent problems by taking medications before the pain comes. Sometimes medications seem to be the only thing that makes somebody feel better, but many people are not aware of the risks of prescription drug abuse.
Graph: Total_Opioid Prescribers For All-States
Insight: The Dangers And Negative Consequences Of Prescription Drug Abuse
Prescription drugs are called Opioids which are easier to obtain than illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine. Opioids are prescribed primarily as pain relievers despite a high risk of addiction and overdose. The increase in deaths caused by the risks involved with the consumption of opioids was alarming and declared an epidemic. When those prescription drugs/opioids are taken abnormally, they may result in death and lead to a crisis.
Prescription Drug Abuse/Opioid Crisis:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23crisis
According to CDC, there are more than 750,000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose, and there are two out of three drug overdose deaths in 2018 involved an opioid, including prescription opioids, heroin, which it is a 100,000 per people. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/index.htm
Prescribed Opioids in Prescriber Dataset
1 Morphine.Sulfate.ER
2 Fentanyl
3 Oxycodone.HCL
4 Oxycontin
5 Morphine.Sulfate
6 Oxycodone.Acetaminophen
7 Hydromorphone.HCL
8 Methadone.HCL
9 Hydrocodone.Acetaminophen
10 Tramadol.HCL
11 Acetaminophen.Codeine
Insight: Prescribed Opioids in Prescriber Dataset
There are 11 opioid drug opioid drugs out of the 250 drugs mentioned in the prescriber's data. Also, there are 60% of the prescribers on this list are opioid prescribers.
Prescribed Opioids vs the Total Prescriptions:
The number of opioid prescribers that out of the total prescribers which come up with about 58.752 % of opioids that have been prescribed.
Graph: Opioid Prescribers by Gender:
Insight: Opioid Prescribers by Gender:
The number of non-opioid prescribers is similar in the case of males and females. Even though prescribed opioids are higher in the case of males, that can be subject to the kind of specialties males and females prescribers prefer.
Graph: Opioid Prescribers by Specialty
Insight: Opioid Prescribers by Specialty
Opioid prescribers count by specialty and NPI for the top 30 specialties, the use of opioids is much higher in specialties which involve the use of pain killers or inhibitors.
Graph: Opioid Prescribers by State
Insight: Opioid Prescribers by State
Opioid Prescriber count by State and NPI for the top 30 states, overview for all Opioid prescribers per state are showing the highest states with drug abuse.
Graph: Opioid Prescribers by State
Insight: Opioid Prescribers by State
States like CA, NY, FL, TX have the higher opioid prescribers which correspond with high health rates reported due to opioid overdose.
Graph: Principal Component Analysis(dimensionality reduction)
Insight: Principal Component Analysis(dimensionality reduction)
First, The analysis goal is bringing down 358 columns to a few factors to describe the data with numeric values.
Second, from those new factors, only those will be selected which explains 80% of the total variability in data to classify opioid Prescribers.
Finally, the weightage of original factors in the newly formed factors will be observed to gather insights for a driver analysis.
Conclusion:
Although the problems of prescription drug abuse seem impossible to eliminate, there are concrete steps that can be taken by people themselves and governments to weaken the hold of prescription drugs. The risk of abuse of prescription drugs is too huge to ignore ourselves. The increase in overdose fatalities is a well-known problem, and the search for possible solutions is an ongoing effort. But, the prevention of opioid crisis can be done by detecting some sources of significant quantities of opioid prescriptions.
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