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Main Authors: Peterson, Emily N, Edwards, Alex, Wetzel, Martha, Waller, Lance A, Cooper, Hannah, Yarbrough, Courtney
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02303
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author Peterson, Emily N
Edwards, Alex
Wetzel, Martha
Waller, Lance A
Cooper, Hannah
Yarbrough, Courtney
author_facet Peterson, Emily N
Edwards, Alex
Wetzel, Martha
Waller, Lance A
Cooper, Hannah
Yarbrough, Courtney
contents County-level estimates of opioid use disorder (OUD) are essential for understanding the influence of local economic and social conditions. They provide policymakers with the granular information needed to identify, target, and implement effective interventions and allocate resources appropriately. Traditional disease mapping methods typically rely on Poisson regression, modeling observed counts while adjusting for local covariates that are treated as fixed and known. However, these methods may fail to capture the complexities and uncertainties in areas with sparse or absent data. To address this challenge, we developed a Bayesian hierarchical spatio-temporal top-down approach designed to estimate county-level OUD rates when direct small-area (county) data is unavailable. This method allows us to infer small-area OUD rates and quantify associated uncertainties, even in data-sparse environments using observed state-level OUD rates and a combination of state and county level informative covariates. We applied our approach to estimate OUD rates for 3,143 counties in the United States between 2010 and 2025. Model performance was assessed through simulation studies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_02303
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Bayesian Spatio-Temporal Top-Down Framework for Estimating Opioid Use Disorder Risk Under Data Sparsity
Peterson, Emily N
Edwards, Alex
Wetzel, Martha
Waller, Lance A
Cooper, Hannah
Yarbrough, Courtney
Applications
County-level estimates of opioid use disorder (OUD) are essential for understanding the influence of local economic and social conditions. They provide policymakers with the granular information needed to identify, target, and implement effective interventions and allocate resources appropriately. Traditional disease mapping methods typically rely on Poisson regression, modeling observed counts while adjusting for local covariates that are treated as fixed and known. However, these methods may fail to capture the complexities and uncertainties in areas with sparse or absent data. To address this challenge, we developed a Bayesian hierarchical spatio-temporal top-down approach designed to estimate county-level OUD rates when direct small-area (county) data is unavailable. This method allows us to infer small-area OUD rates and quantify associated uncertainties, even in data-sparse environments using observed state-level OUD rates and a combination of state and county level informative covariates. We applied our approach to estimate OUD rates for 3,143 counties in the United States between 2010 and 2025. Model performance was assessed through simulation studies.
title A Bayesian Spatio-Temporal Top-Down Framework for Estimating Opioid Use Disorder Risk Under Data Sparsity
topic Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.02303