Investigating the importance of county-level characteristics in opioid-related mortality across the United States
The opioid crisis remains a critical public health challenge in the United States. Despite national efforts which reduced opioid prescribing rates by nearly 45\% between 2011 and 2021, opioid-related overdose deaths more than tripled during the same period. This alarming trend reflects a major shift in the crisis, with illegal opioids now driving the majority of overdose deaths instead of prescription opioids. Although much attention has been given to supply-side factors fueling this transition, the underlying structural conditions that perpetuate and exacerbate opioid misuse remain less understood. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic intensified the opioid crisis through widespread social isolation and record-high unemployment; consequently, understanding the underlying drivers of this epidemic has become even more crucial in recent years. To address this need, our study examines the correlation between opioid-related mortality and thirteen county-level characteristics related to population traits, economic stability, and infrastructure. Leveraging a nationwide county-level dataset spanning consecutive years from 2010 to 2022, this study integrates empirical insights from exploratory data analysis with feature importance metrics derived from machine learning models. Our findings highlight critical regional characteristics strongly correlated with opioid-related mortality, emphasizing their potential roles in worsening the epidemic when their levels are high and mitigating it when their levels are low.