Final Project

Project Members: Winnie Hou, Bryan Lin, Alex Chau, Kathy Lam

Domain of Interest: Health/Healthcare - Death Caused by Drug Use

Domain of Interest

• We were interested in this domain because drug use has always been a prevalent issue in our society. Often times, people have the general knowledge that drug use is an issue but don't see the trends and affect that it has. By looking at this issue under a microscope, we believe that we can bring more understanding and transparency to those who don't fully understand it and contribute to the healthcare community.

• Some examples of data driven projects related to this domain include:

  • https://ourworldindata.org/alcohol-and-drug-dependency

    • This concise project reveals patterns in drug dependencies around the world and identifies trends in gender and age.

  • https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html

    • This project, though simple, gives a brief breakdown of drug overdose deaths throughout the Unites States.

  • https://ourworldindata.org/substance-use

    • This project utilizes interactive web applications to help people visualize the substance abuse around the world.

• We're curious to see if there is any correlation between drug use and natural death in specific ages, if drug use increases as age increases, and if the number of deaths have increased over the years for the younger population. By answering these questions, we believe we can adjust the healthcare approach of addressing and preventing further deaths by drug use. This problem is especially prevalent with individuals presented with high-stress situations who rely on an external source to destress or compensate.

Finding Data

• Data source URL

  • Drug Use by Age https://data.world/fivethirtyeight/drug-use-by-age
  • Accidental Drug Related Deaths 2012-2018 https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/accidental-drug-related-deaths-january-2012-sept-2015
  • Provisional Drug Overdoes Death Counts https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

• Who collected the data?

  • Drug Use by Age
    • National Survey on Drug Use and Health from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archive
    • This data was collected through a questionaires, surveys, and sampling.
  • Accidental Drug Related Deaths 2012-2018
    • An investigation by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner which includes the toxicity report, death certificate, as well as a scene investigation
  • Provisional Drug Overdoes Death Counts
    • National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)
    • This data was collected based on death records recieved from the NCHS

• What is the data about?

  • Drug Use by Age
    • A listing of various drug use frequencies associated with various ages from 12 to 65+
  • Accidental Drug Related Deaths 2012-2018
    • A listing of each accidental death associated with drug overdoes in Connecticut from 2012-2018
  • Provisional Drug Overdoes Death Counts
    • provisional counts for drug overdose deaths based on a current flow of mortality data in the National Vital Statistic System.

• How many observations(rows) were in the data?

  • For the VSRR_Provisional_Drug_Overdose_Death_Counts.csv data, there were 13320 rows. For the drug-use-by-age.csv data, there were 17 rows. For the Accidental_Drug_Related_Deaths_2012-2018.csv data, there were 5105 rows.

• How many features(columns) are in the data?

  • For the VSRR_Provisional_Drug_Overdose_Death_Counts.csv data, there were 12 columns. For the drug-use-by-age.csv data, there were 28 columns. For the Accidental_Drug_Related_Deaths_2012-2018.csv, there were 41 columns.

• What questions (from above) can be answered using the data in this dataset?

  • Is there a correlation between drug use and natural deaths in certain ages?
  • Does drug use increase as you get older?
  • Has the number of deaths have increased due to drugs over the years in the younger generation?