New report from LA County Public Health
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has released its fifth annual report on mortality among people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County. From 2021 to 2022, the most recent years of data available for the report, the overall mortality rate increased by just 2% from 3,215 per 100,000 people to 3,282 per 100,000 people. This is a welcomed plateauing of the mortality rate among people experiencing homelessness, which previously saw a devastating increase of 56% from 2019 to 2021.
The recent plateau in the overall mortality rate can be attributed largely to a leveling off of the rate of drug overdose deaths, the leading cause of death among People Experiencing Homelessness for the past six years, and a sharp decline in COVID-19 mortality. From 2021 to 2022, the distribution of doses of naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medication, saw a two-and-a-half-fold increase in communities most affected by fentanyl overdoses, and the number of reported naloxone-induced overdose reversals nearly doubled. These efforts likely contributed to the rapid leveling-off of the overdose mortality rate in 2022.
Drug and alcohol overdose continues to be the leading cause of death among unhoused individuals in 2022, accounting for 37% of all deaths. Overdose was the leading cause of death among males and females, and among Whites, Latinx, and Blacks. Despite the recent leveling off of the overdose mortality rate among people experiencing homelessness, the percentage of overdose deaths involving fentanyl continued to rise through 2022 for all racial and ethnic groups and for both males and females, signifying. that the risk of fentanyl overdose is very high among unhoused people who use drugs.
