Investigating Drug Abuse Relationships

Investigate relationships between drug use and other trends over the same period of time.

Team Members:

• Lindsey McKenna
• James Brunhs *Paula Caudilla

Research Questions to Answer:

• What percentage of deaths by region are drug/alcohol related?
• What percentage of drug deaths are opiods? Illicit drugs? Alcohol?
• What is the correlation between average household income and drug mortality?
• What is the correlation between homeless population and drug mortality?
• Is there a correlation between drug-related convictions and deaths?

Datasets to be used:

Census Population - https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest/datasets/2010-2016/state/asrh/ Drug Overdose Data - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm Point in Time Estimates of Homelessness - https://www.hudexchange.info/resource/5783/2018-ahar-part-1-pit-estimates-of-homelessness-in-the-us/ Total Annual Drug Arrests - https://www.drugwarfacts.org/node/234#

Rough Breakdown of Tasks:

• Define states by Region to bin later
• Locate alcohol mortality data, insert into drug data
• Munge, truncate, etc data to be sucinct as possible, focusing on 2017
• Build dataframes (pivot?) with focuses on each question
• Locate national crime data, bin by definded region, isolate drug related convictions

Hypothesis:

Higher rates of homelessness and lower average household incomes have a direct impact on substance use

Charts:

• Compare Drug Related Mortality to Household Income
• Compare Drug Related Mortality to Homelessness
• Compare Drug Related Mortality to Drug Arrests
• Household Income per Region
• Drug Related Deaths per Region
• Homelessness per Region
• Drug Arrests per Region
• Named Drugs (Illicit, Opiods, Alcohol) Death Counts Region 1
• Named Drugs (Illicit, Opiods, Alcohol) Death Counts Region 2
• Named Drugs (Illicit, Opiods, Alcohol) Death Counts Region 3
• Named Drugs (Illicit, Opiods, Alcohol) Death Counts Region 4