By: Yereth Rosen, Alaska Beacon
Nonfatal opioid overdose rates declined in Alaska in 2024, a potentially hopeful sign for a state that had a record number of overdose deaths the year before, health officials said. The number of deaths in 2024 is not yet available.
The downturn in nonfatal overdoses late last year comes as part of a six-year trend of volatility in rates of emergency department visits for opioid overdoses that did not result in deaths, according to a bulletin issued by the Alaska Division of Public Health’s epidemiology section.
From 2019 to 2024, those rates veered between 1.5 and 4 per 1,000 emergency visits, according to the bulletin. The highest rates were recorded in early 2021 and in late 2023, the bulletin said.
By late 2024, the rate had fallen to below 2 per 1,000 emergency department visits. That may be a good sign, as nonfatal overdoses treated in emergency departments have generally mirrored rates of overdose deaths, the bulletin said.
The report struck a note of caution about the preliminary nature of the statistics, however.
“The decline in late 2024 is promising but needs further monitoring to determine if it represents a temporary fluctuation or a sustained trend,” it said.
In all, there were 4,842 emergency department visits for nonfatal opioid overdoses in Alaska from 2019 to 2024, the bulletin said. The average rate over the period was 2.6 per 1,000 visits, the bulletin said.
By geography, the highest rates were in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and Anchorage; all other regions had rates below the statewide average, and the lowest was in the Interior.
Patients 25 to 34 years old comprised the age group with the highest rate, followed closely by patients 35 to 44 years old, the bulletin said. Rates for men were higher than those for women, it said.
There are limitations to the findings, the bulletin said.
Information about fentanyl, the drug that has been the cause of most opioid overdose deaths in recent years, was incomplete before 2020, it said. And underreporting of overdoses that do not result in emergency department visits might have affected the findings, it said.
In an emailed statement, the bulletin’s authors, both state epidemiology specialists, said they are trying to understand why and how the rate declined in late 2024.
“It’s difficult to isolate one main reason or a combination of multiple reasons,” said the authors, Jessica Filley and Riley Fitting.
“Some potential reasons that we need to investigate further could be changes in drug supply, different drug use patterns, increased access/use of naloxone, people overdosing/receiving naloxone but not making a trip to the emergency room for care, and perhaps an increase in people accessing treatment or engaging in other harm reduction strategies,” they said.
Naloxone is a medicine that reverses overdose effects and can thus save lives. A new law in Alaska requires schools to stock overdose-reversal kits with medication and other supplies.
Alaska had 357 overdose deaths in 2023, an increase of nearly 45% over the previous year, according to a state report issued late last year. It was, by far, the highest increase rate of all states, and it bucked a national trend of declining overdose deaths.
While state totals for fatal overdoses in 2024 are not yet available, preliminary numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a continued increase in Alaska. Alaska was on track for about a 17% increase in drug overdose deaths as of last September, according to the CDC’s preliminary information.
At that time, Alaska was one of only five states with increasing numbers of overdose deaths. Nationally, overdose deaths declined by nearly 24% from September 2023 to September 2024, the CDC said.
