Want to see how overdose, suicide, homicide and firearms death trends are shifting in your community and across the U.S.? A new dashboard from the CDC makes local and national data easier to explore. Use it to learn about trends, support your work, or advocate for change.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched this dashboard in mid-January 2025 to share searchable data on deaths from accidental overdose, suicides and homicides with or without a firearm, and all firearm deaths. State- and county-level data are available starting in 2019, and data for census tracts (smaller regions of a few thousand people) goes back to 2022 for most parts of the country. Current, localized data like this helps us understand public health challenges and work together to prevent harm, support each other, and build healthier communities.
If you work in violence prevention, public health, or community planning – or simply have an interest in these issues – the dashboard can help you see where and how communities are being affected by these types of deaths, and how patterns are changing over time. You can also compare different areas to spot disparities (which areas have more deaths) and changes over time.
A shift in scope:
When it was launched in mid-January, the dashboard also included data on nonfatal injuries, including emergency room visits for falls, motor vehicle crashes, or violence. However, due to recent budget cuts and changes to federal data collection programs, this information is no longer included. That means people can no longer use the site to look at trends in nonfatal injury in their communities.
Even so, the dashboard remains a valuable tool for understanding fatal overdose, suicide, and homicide. The ability to drill down to the local level can help communities plan more effective responses and seek support or funding for the areas most in need.
If you’re looking for broader injury data, the CDC’s WISQARS site [archived link] still offers some tools to explore both fatal and nonfatal injuries.
🛠️Action Alert!
How can you explore the data? Here’s a quick guide to get started:
1. Choose a Topic: Select from categories including drug overdose, suicide, homicide, or all firearm deaths.
2. Select a Location and Time Period: Pick a state, county, or census tract – or explore national data – and a year.
3. View Visualizations: Examine interactive maps, trend lines, and bar charts that update based on your selections.
4. Download Data: Export the data for further analysis or to include in reports and presentations.
Real-world uses for the dashboard:
While this data may not provide all the context researchers or organizations need, it can serve as a useful starting point. For example, it allows us to explore whether overdose deaths are rising faster in some areas compared to others, or to see if certain policies or programs, such as naloxone distribution (tinyurl.com/TNG-OTC-nalaxone) or red flag laws (tinyurl.com/AAPredflaglaws), might align with changes in trends.
This data can support a variety of purposes, including funding applications, program design, and advocacy for policy change.
➡️ Opioid task forces can track overdose hotspots and assess the impact of their interventions.
➡️ Domestic violence organizations advocating for policy change might be able to link the overall prevalence of firearm homicides in their region with intimate partner homicides (for which they may have separate data).
➡️ Policymakers can explore how similar policy changes in other states or regions have affected trends and consider the potential impact in their own areas.
➡️ Violence prevention programs or law enforcement agencies might monitor trends in firearm deaths to adjust or improve their prevention strategies.
➡️ Researchers can investigate regional variations in suicide rates and identify areas where additional research may be needed.
➡️ Educators can use this data to help students better understand the public health implications of overdose and violence trends.
The dashboard’s visualizations can also be helpful for anyone giving a presentation, making information more engaging and easier to understand.
What about demographic information?
The dashboard’s FAQ explains that the CDC does not include data on age, sex, race, or ethnicity on this dashboard, but that’s not a change – it has been the case since the dashboard launched in January. If you are looking for demographic information, here are other CDC resources you can use for state-level data:
➡️ The State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS) dashboard [archived link] provides state-level data on demographics and circumstances (like factors related to the overdose) for deaths that were unintentional or of undetermined intent.
➡️ State-level demographic data for overdose, suicide, and homicide is also available through WISQARS [archived link] and CDC WONDER. [archived link]
📊 Data makes a difference!
Whether you’re a data nerd, working to prevent overdose and violence, or just curious about what’s happening in your community, this dashboard is worth a look. If you use the dashboard, we would love to hear from you about it!
Clear, local, up-to-date data is a foundation of public health. The more we understand, the better we can protect and support each other.
