New CDC Portal Aims to Turn Overdose Data Into Action

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched a new public-facing data portal designed to give a centralized view of national overdose trends and prevention resources. 

The CDC’s Overdose Prevention Data Channel consolidates information from three existing data systems into a single website, allowing users to compare fatal and nonfatal overdose data, explore trends by state and time period and access prevention and treatment resources. 

“The real push here is to consolidate the surveillance data across the system so that people aren’t digging for the fatal data and the non-fatal data and the prevention resources,” said Christine Mattson, deputy associate director of science in the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.  

The new webpage does not introduce any new data. Instead, it serves as a central repository for information that is already available through separate CDC systems, including the State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System, the Drug Overdose Surveillance and Epidemiology System and the National Vital Statistics System. Users can view national and state-level overdose data and download underlying data in CSV format or visualizations as PNG files for use in other analyses and documents.  

The portal’s “Drug Overdose at a Glance” visualization shows that there were 70,731 preliminary drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2025, a 13% decline from 2024. It also reports 54.6 suspected non-fatal overdose-involved emergency department visits per 10,000 ED visits in 45 states and D.C., a 5.6% decline from the previous year. 

Users can also look into individual states and examine quarterly trends by drug category, including opioids, stimulants and illegally manufactured fentanyl. 

The CDC emphasized that some of the data is preliminary or incomplete and that users should consult the portal’s data considerations and links to the underlying dashboards when interpreting results. Mattson said the agency also plans to clearly identify which jurisdictions are contributing data.   

The portal also connects data directly to intervention strategies. One visualization indicates that an opportunity to intervene existed in 66 out of 100 overdose deaths in 2025, including situations involving a potential bystander who might have been able to recognize an overdose and administer naloxone. 

Ultimately, the CDC said the goal is to reduce the time users spend locating and assembling information and increase the time they can spend applying it to overdose prevention and response. 

“The most useful data does more than show us what has happened; it helps us decide what to do next,” said Grant Baldwin, director of CDC’s Division of Overdose Prevention in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. “The continued decline in predicted overdose deaths is encouraging, but progress is not a finish line. The Overdose Prevention Data Channel gives communities and public health professionals a clearer view of fatal and nonfatal overdose trends, along with evidence-based strategies they can use to tailor resources, strengthen prevention efforts and save lives.”