An inaugural survey from Johns Hopkins University is shedding light on how dangerous drug overdoses are in Baltimore city and county.
The first-ever Baltimore Area Survey, found that more than a quarter of residents had a loved one who died from a drug overdose.
“If you think about one in every four people you meet in the Baltimore area has experienced, personally, someone has actually lost a loved one to an overdose,” said Michael Bader, the director of JHU’s 21st Century Cities Initiative, which conducted the research. “That's a profound thing that we're able to show and there were no racial differences here.”
By comparison, a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found about 10% of Americans lost a family member to drugs.
While the high overdose numbers did not show any racial differences, much of the other health data showed large disparities between Black and white residents.
The survey found that more than half of Black residents were food insecure, meaning they couldn’t afford food, skipped meals or could not pay for balanced meals each month.
By contrast, about a quarter of white residents reported food insecurity.
JHU’s 21st Century Cities Initiative is funded for three years to take the pulse of the city and the county.
“One of the things that we really want to try to do with this survey is build a body of evidence,” Bader said. “With this survey we can actually see and measure how much of an impact something like the red line has on transportation insecurity over time. And the only way we're able to do that is by having this baseline data.”
JHU plans to release more in-depth analysis of the data in the near future.