ArcGIS Lab Report: National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA)

Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Course
Date
ArcGIS Lab Report
Opioid crisis has become an issue of concern in the United States. According to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), the State of Virginia is the most hit with the cases of opioid overdose. In 1990s, the medical society of the United States recommended that patients could not get addicted when treated with opioids as pain relievers. This did not however, work out as the number of people addicted to opioids and dying from opioid overdose has been increasing every year. The concern for this has been on the future of the nation, especially for the mostly impacted states such as the state of West Virginia. The map above was created to address the rate of opioid crisis in the state of Virginia. NIDA reports that the state of West Virginia had the highest rate of 43.4 deaths per a thousand people. This is the highest rate and it has been increasing significantly, creating a need for intervention. The purpose of the map above is to identify areas that are significantly impacted with the goal of calling into action all the stakeholders to take action. The stakeholders in this case are health institutions, policy makers, health facilitators, the government, and non-governmental organizations.
.The map reader will learn that opioid crisis is heading towards becoming a national crisis, considering that until now, medics are still prescribing opioids as pain relievers. Health institutions will question the morality of continued use of opioids as pain relievers. The data for this map was mainly collected from NIDA...