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Healthy New Jersey
Drug Overdose Reporting System (SUDORS)
The New Jersey State Unintentional Drug Overdose Reporting System (NJSUDORS) is maintained at the NJDOH Center for Health Statistics and Informatics (CHS) under the Overdose Data to Action in States (OD2A-S) program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This surveillance system links data from multiple sources into a single standardized record of an overdose death.
NJSUDORS includes unintentional overdose deaths and overdose deaths of undetermined intent that occur in New Jersey as well as overdoses among New Jersey residents that occur out-of-state.
What is the history of the SUDORS system?
The SUDORS system was established under a previous CDC program in 2016 to monitor opioid-related overdoses and leverages the data collection and management system of the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). In 2019, the system was expanded to cover overdose deaths from all substances, and now covers 49 states and the District of Columbia. New Jersey has not only been a participating state from the inception of SUDORS but has retroactively processed overdose deaths by current SUDORS standards back to 2012.
What types of data are collected?
SUDORS data comes from death certificates, medical examiner reports, and post-mortem toxicology reports. These data are processed by a team of data abstractors who interpret the available information, code data fields according to CDC guidelines, and write a complete narrative of the overdose. This work results in as many as 600 data points for any given overdose. Below are some of the data that may come from each of the sources:
- Death certificate: Demographics, location of overdose, date and location of death, cause and manner of death, other contributing diseases or conditions, and residential address.
- Medical examiner reports: History of overdoses or substance-abuse treatment, presence of bystanders, use of naloxone, and route of drug administration.
- Post-mortem toxicology: All drugs detected and drugs that contributed to death.