Opioid Overdose Deaths in the United States

Data Visualization
Project info
Data
Interactive prototype
Read process on Medium
overview
For Communication Design Studio class, I was given multitudes of datasets related to Drugs & Alcohol. From the data, I was able to extract a story I wanted to tell around this topic.

Each year, the number of overdose deaths outnumber the previous year’s record. I wanted to look beyond the growing numbers and understand the person behind the death. Though my research couldn’t encapsulate the pain and story of each person, I wanted to see which demographic was dying the most from drug overdose.
I realized that I miscalculated the area of the circles. Below is a revised representation of total deaths for each drug type. You can see for the year 2021, the deaths of opioid overdose take over the screen.

I also improved the color contrast for ethnicity comparison.
revisions
Currently, the data shows annual information. I think it would be compelling to show the total deaths up to date.

How do these deaths impact our society?

How can you make information feel more personal?

Where are people finding these drugs? Who’s behind them?
reflections& next steps