RIDOH's Substance Use Data Hub
The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) Substance Use Data Hub offers accessible, comprehensive information at three data hubs to support statewide prevention and harm reduction efforts.
RIDOH’s Substance Use Data Hub features the following hub sites:
These hub sites provide municipal, county, and statewide data trends, offering insights into the effects of substance use on Rhode Islanders and highlighting variations in health burdens among different geographic areas and populations.
With these data, RIDOH strives to communicate health risks and connections to resources, inform data-driven policies, and advance health equity. Each hub site provides a collection of reports, presentations, research articles, and downloadable data for additional analysis, if available.
Data and Health Equity
RIDOH prioritizes health equity in all of our work. Every effort is made to ensure race and ethnicity are collected, analyzed, and communicated in each dataset. Data are aggregated by race and ethnicity, or broken down by subcategories or groups, to improve quality and completeness. These data show health inequities, which are systemic, avoidable, unfair, and unjust differences in health status across population groups.
Health inequities can be attributed to generations-long social, economic, and environmental inequities, which result in adverse health outcomes. These inequities can include poverty, discrimination, racism, and their consequences. For example, segregation in housing and education and racist mortgage lending and zoning policies have affected communities differently and have had a greater influence on health outcomes than genetics, individual choices, or access to healthcare.
RIDOH recognizes that the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, learn, work, and play affect health in powerful ways. By including information on race/ethnicity, sex, age, and location, when available, RIDOH works to identify health disparities to improve opportunities for healthier living among all Rhode Islanders.
We are actively working to add information on gender, sexual orientation, housing, education, and disability to our data hubs to better address health disparities in the future.
Person-Centered Framework
RIDOH also prioritizes a person-centered approach. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and community partners recognize certain individuals as "populations of interest" due to their higher risk for negative health consequences, including:
- Adolescents and young adults
- Infants and young children
- Older adults
- People in poor health or with chronic conditions
- People in recovery
- People who may become pregnant
- People with disabilities
- Pregnant or postpartum people
- Racial and ethnic minorities
Small Numbers Reporting Policy
The Substance Use Data Hub adheres to RIDOH’s Small Numbers Reporting Policy. Data are suppressed when counts are fewer than five to protect the confidentiality of individual identities.
Rhode Island Department of Health
