Staying Under the Radar? Overdose Death Patterns in Immigrant Communities and the Impact of Sanctuary Status

• In Event: Communities and Place: The Overdose Epidemic in Context

Abstract

The opioid crisis has put a White face to the overdose issue, however, less is known about the contextual factors that may impact overdose death across different racial and ethnic groups. Communities with large immigrant populations may face unique challenges in seeking help for problems with addiction, as fear of detection from criminal justice authorities may decrease engagement with institutions such as hospitals under Brayne’s (2014) systems avoidance framework. On the other hand, these same communities may provide ample sources of informal support to residents under the immigrant revitalization hypothesis. It is further hypothesized that sanctuary status will decrease overdose deaths in these communities due to less fear of engagement with record keeping institutions in areas with limited ICE cooperation. The current study investigates overdose death at the MSA level across racial groups utilizing negative binomial regression to determine the influence of immigrant populations and sanctuary status as well as stable key predictors such as opioid prescription and disadvantage. Findings reveal that the percent Hispanic foreign-born significantly influence overdose deaths for all observed groups net other relevant factors- increasing deaths for Latinx populations while decreasing White and Black non-Hispanic deaths. Contrary to our hypothesis regarding sanctuary cities, sanctuary status increased overdose counts.

Authors

• Kelly Pierce, University of Cincinnati

• Ben Feldmeyer, University of Cincinnati

• Diana Sun, Florida Atlantic University