The Opioid Environment Policy Scan (OEPS) is a free, open-source data warehouse centered on the multi-dimensional risk environment impacting opioid use and health outcomes, particularly for justice communities, across the United States. 

The OEPS consolidates cleaned and processed data spanning Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD) Access, Health, Built Environment, Economic, and other contextual data at the Census tract, zip code, county, and state levels. Its data supports JCOIN research into the communities and conditions impacting and impacted by opioid use and identifying strategies or policies to reduce harm in communities nationwide.

All datasets are available for download as csv files or can be visualized and mapped for further exploration. Download the entire data repository, or you can filter and download by theme or spatial scale. All datasets are accompanied by documentation detailing their source data, year, and more. Geographic boundary shapefiles are provided for ease of merging datasets (csv files) for exploration, spatial analysis, or visualization. 

The Opioid Environment Toolkit is a resource accompanying the OEPS that includes tutorials introducing basic spatial analytic functionalities in applied examples, using the R programming language. Researchers and analysts can get started right away with exploring OEPS data using the sample scripts in the Toolkit, which demonstrates visualizing, mapping, and understanding the opioid risk environment.

The OEPS was developed by the Healthy Regions and Policies Lab (HEROP) at the Center for Spatial Data Science at University of Chicago. As the geospatial analytics lead at the Methodology and Advanced Analytics Resource Center (MAARC), we developed the OEPS as a resource for the broader JCOIN network. Data and additional resources are also available through the JCOIN Data Commons. Learn more about the Healthy Regions and Policies Lab at https://healthyregions.org.

Learn more about the OEPS: https://oeps.healthyregions.org

Access the data on GitHub: https://github.com/GeoDaCenter/opioid-policy-scan