New! Substance Use and Harms Tool

Public Health Ontario (PHO) publishes many resources on a variety of important public health topics that range from vaccine safety surveillance to respiratory viruses to opioids. As part of PHO’s efforts to streamline the delivery of data and information, we have developed the new Substance Use and Harms Tool.

This new tool integrates existing substance use and harms data already reported on PHO’s website and provides users with a single source where all related data is integrated, allowing for easy comparisons across indicators. Users can search through different tabs to find data broken down by indicator, public health unit, age and sex, drug type, as well as trends over time. Data is presented for the most recent ten years for opioid-related harms, and from 2018 for stimulant and benzodiazepine-related harms, and includes:

• emergency department visits due to opioid-related poisonings
• hospitalizations due to opioid-related poisonings
• deaths due to opioid toxicity, deaths due to stimulant toxicity
• deaths due to benzodiazepine toxicity

To ensure that the data and information in this new tool is presented in the most user friendly and streamlined manner possible, we consulted with key partners on how to enhance the way the data is shared.

Data will be updated quarterly and will expand to include additional substances (e.g., alcohol, tobacco and cannabis), and harm reduction and substance use indicators.

As a result of this data integration, PHO’s Interactive Opioid Tool, Stimulant Harms Snapshot, and Benzodiazepine Harms Snapshot are no longer available.