MHA 515 Week 5 Trends in Public Health Example

Down 35% Nationally, Up 18% in Arizona: Reading Public Health Trends for Tucson When the National Story Does Not Fit

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MHA/515: Scanning the Health Sector as an Industry Expert

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The health system, its needs assessment and programs are composites written for a model paper; overdose counts and city estimates come from the CDC data sets cited, retrieved in September 2026.

Every three years, the composite three-hospital Tucson system, like other nonprofit hospitals, completes a community health needs assessment identifying the most significant health needs in its service area and a plan to address them. The first draft of this cycle's report, written in spring, stated that the overdose crisis was easing, citing national news. The director of strategic planning asked the team to check the local data before the board saw it. This paper presents what they found and what it means.

The National Story

National data do show a dramatic change. CDC's provisional counts of drug overdose deaths over 12-month periods fell from 109,413 for 2022 to 106,881 for 2023, 80,860 for 2024 and 70,646 for 2025, and 67,104 for the 12 months ending March 2026 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2026). A decline of more than a third in three years is one of the largest public health improvements in recent memory.

The Arizona Story

Arizona's counts followed the national pattern only briefly. Deaths fell from 2,737 in 2022 and 2,720 in 2023 to 2,531 in 2024, but then rose each month through 2025, reaching 2,978 for the year, an increase of about 18%, and 2,871 for the 12 months ending March 2026 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2026). A report that followed the national headline would have told the board the crisis was fading in the year it grew.

What the Counts Are

The counts are provisional, based on death records that can take months to complete, and CDC reports both reported and predicted values to adjust for delays. They are counts, not rates, so comparing states requires population adjustment. For tracking change within one state over time, counts are reasonable, since Arizona's population has not grown by anything close to 18% in a year.

Possible Causes

The data do not explain the rise. Possible factors include changes in the illicit drug supply, such as new adulterants, differences in access to treatment and naloxone and the state's position on trafficking routes. The team recorded these as hypotheses to discuss with the county health department, which has more detailed data by drug and neighborhood.

Tucson's Chronic Disease Picture

City-level model-based estimates from CDC's local data program, released in 2025, describe Tucson's adults: age-adjusted obesity of 34.5%, high blood pressure of 31.9%, diabetes of 10.9%, current smoking of 13.2% and no leisure-time physical activity of 25.2% (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025). These estimates come from statistical models combining national survey data with local population characteristics (Greenlund et al., 2022).

Mental Health

The same estimates show that 24.2% of Tucson adults have been told they have depression and 18.5% report frequent mental distress. Mental health and substance use are closely linked, and the overdose rise makes both more urgent.

Social Needs

The release also estimates social needs: 20.9% of adults experienced food insecurity, 16.0% housing insecurity, 11.9% lacked reliable transportation and 33.8% reported feeling socially isolated. Among adults aged 18 to 64, 16.0% lacked health insurance.

Heat as a Public Health Trend

Extreme heat is a growing concern in southern Arizona, especially for older adults, people without housing and those with chronic illness. The team added heat-related emergency visits from the system's own records to the assessment and will seek county data on heat deaths.

The System's Own Data

The team checked whether its hospitals saw the same pattern. Emergency visits for opioid overdose across the three hospitals rose about a fifth from 2024 to 2025, consistent with the state trend and inconsistent with the first draft's claim. Admissions for complications of injection drug use, such as heart valve infections, also rose. The system's own records confirmed that the local trend was real and already affecting its beds.

Listening to the Community

The assessment also draws on what residents say. The team held listening sessions in six neighborhoods and with groups representing people in recovery, older adults and families with young children. Participants named housing costs, summer heat, transportation to appointments and access to mental health care most often, and people in recovery described long waits for treatment after leaving the emergency department.

Choosing Priorities

With more needs than resources, the team ranked them using five criteria: how many people are affected, how severe the harm is, whether the trend is worsening, whether the burden falls unequally on some groups and whether the system can make a real difference. Overdose ranked first on severity and trend, mental health on size and social needs on inequity and the system's ability to screen and refer.

Limits of the Data

Provisional counts may change. City estimates are modeled rather than measured and carry confidence intervals, such as 30.4% to 38.3% for obesity. Neither data set shows neighborhood differences within Tucson, which the county can provide.

Correcting the Draft

The revised report replaced the sentence about the crisis easing with a short table showing national and Arizona counts side by side for 2022 through 2025, and a sentence explaining that the state's trend had reversed. The director added a rule for future reports: every national figure cited must be paired with the state or local figure for the same measure, or a note explaining why none exists.

Budget and Staffing

The four responses require new staff and funds. The finance team estimated first-year costs of about $2.4 million, mainly for peer recovery coaches, behavioral health consultants and community grants, partly offset by grant funding and fewer repeat emergency visits.

Response One: Overdose Prevention in the Emergency Department

The system will start buprenorphine in its emergency departments for patients with opioid use disorder, provide naloxone at discharge and connect patients to treatment within 72 hours through peer recovery coaches. The measure is the share of overdose patients leaving with naloxone and a treatment appointment.

Response Two: Mental Health in Primary Care

Behavioral health consultants will join the system's largest primary care clinics, with depression screening for all adults. The measure is follow-up within 30 days for patients who screen positive.

Response Three: Screening for Social Needs

All admitted patients and primary care patients will be screened for food, housing and transportation needs, with referrals to a community resource network. The measure is the share of patients screened and the share connected to help.

Response Four: Partnerships

The system will join the county health department and community organizations in a shared overdose response group and fund food and transportation programs identified in the assessment. Public health problems need partners.

Watching the Trends

The team will update overdose counts each quarter and the city estimates with each annual release, reporting changes to the board's community benefit committee.

Conclusion

National overdose deaths fell by more than a third in three years, but Arizona's rose in 2025. City estimates added chronic disease, mental health and social needs that the system cannot address alone. By checking local data before accepting a national story, the team wrote an assessment that directs resources where Tucson's needs are growing, with partners and measures to track whether they help.

References

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). PLACES: Place data (GIS friendly format), 2025 release [Data set]. data.cdc.gov. https://data.cdc.gov/d/vgc8-iyc4

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2026). VSRR provisional drug overdose death counts [Data set]. data.cdc.gov. https://data.cdc.gov/d/xkb8-kh2a

Greenlund, K. J., Lu, H., Wang, Y., Matthews, K. A., LeClercq, J. M., Lee, B., & Carlson, S. A. (2022). PLACES: Local data for better health. Preventing Chronic Disease, 19, E31. https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd19.210459