AUSTIN, Texas — Drug overdoses have become a major issue throughout the nation and right here in Texas, but a lot of the data we have today doesn’t give us the full story. 

What You Need To Know

  • The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports more than 5,000 people died of a drug overdose in Texas in 2022

  • UT Austin partnered with outreach groups and the state to create an overdose reporting app

  • Outreach providers say more than 70% of overdoses are never reported to authorities

  • The TxCOPE app will allow anyone to report overdoses and compile real time data statewide

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates more than 5,000 people died of drug overdoses in Texas in 2022, but experts say that number is much higher. Now, a team of educators, health providers and researchers is getting ready to launch a system that will collect unreported data and information.

Creators of TxCOPE, an app developed at UT Austin, report more than 70% of overdoses are under-reported because state data only comes from law enforcement, hospitals and EMTs. TxCOPE lets anyone to report a drug overdose, anonymously.

Sandra Chavez is the director of ASHwell, a community outreach provider in Austin. Chavez and her coworker Christian Duran showed us how to use the app. She says most people don’t report overdoses to the authorities out of fear of prosecution.

“In the state of Texas we don’t have a Good Samaritan law in a way that a person who actually saves someone from an overdose isn’t held legally responsible,” Chavez said.

ASHwell is one of three partners in Travis County who helped develop the idea for TxCOPE.

When Chavez was helping overdose victims in the field, she saw how many cases never made it into the statistics.

”The data that we collected during the time we were collecting, which was about two years, 75% to 80% of those people did not call 911,” she said.

The app doesn’t just collect and report data in real time. It’s also a supply distribution tool for overdose saving drugs like Narcan and it shows users how to respond to an overdose.

“It tells us how the community is taking care of itself,” Chavez said.

UT Austin Addiction Research Institute director Kasey Claborn is the principal investigator for TxCOPE. She showed us the mock-up version of the program, which will instantly report live data into easy-to-use graphics.

“We’ll be able to see on our data visualizations, on our heat maps, if we’re distributing supplies where those overdoses are occurring,” she said.

The Texas Targeted Opioid Response program contacted Claborn about three years ago, asking her to develop a system that would fill in the gaps that current statistics were missing.

The Texas Medical Association reports only 15 of the state’s 254 counties have a medical examiner’s office. Many of those smaller counties also don’t have resources for toxicology reports.

Not only did she find current reporting was limited, but none of the agencies collecting overdose data were communicating with each other.

“TxCOPE is developing a common data model where it all speaks the same language so that then we can ingest all of these different data sources,” she said.

She says this app is finally giving a voice to people often left out of these important conversations, which will change the course of this epidemic, starting at its root.

“Data drives policy, data drives action,” Claborn said. “And so by having the community report instances of overdose and report data into the system that gives the community power.”

Claborn estimates the app will launch statewide sometime in March. Travis County will be the first to roll out the program.