Why TADA at Emory?

spring 2020 magazine

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The Crisis: 21st Century Substance-Related Harms

Substance-related harm represents a defining public health emergency. Despite the 2017 national emergency declaration, overdose mortality rates in 2024 remained 4.5 times higher than in 1999, continuing to diminish U.S. life expectancy. 

The crisis is dynamic: Injection drug use has surged, causing hepatitis C and HIV outbreaks in rural areas, while demographic mortality ratios (e.g., Black/white and rural/urban) have recently flipped. Addressing these rapidly evolving patterns requires faster, more precise interventions than traditional survey methods—which often suffer from significant reporting lags—can provide.

4.5x

increase in overdose mortality rates in 2024 from 1999

2017

The year the opioid crisis was declared a national emergency.

5x

increase in rates of injection drug use between 2011 and 2018

The Opportunity: Data Science

The National Institute on Drug Abuse's strategic plan emphasizes the transformative potential of "data science ecosystems" to combat these crises. By leveraging high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety "big data," researchers can gain real-time insights. 

Examples include:

  • Social media data: Analyzing platforms like X, Reddit, and Bluesky via natural language processing allows for the early detection of novel substances and immediate identification of barriers to treatment.
  • Administrative data: Linking electronic medical records and vital statistics provides a comprehensive "census" of outcomes, even for small, high-risk sub-populations.
  • Geospatial data: Georeferenced data enables "place-based" action, mapping hotspots for EMS response and evaluating the local impact of prevention policies.

The Training Gap: A Complementary Crisis

Unfortunately, critical barriers exist in the current workforce that impede the integration of social and behavioral science (SBS) with advanced data analytics:

  • Data scientists often lack training in SBS theory and community engagement, leading to "naïve" algorithms that may inadvertently increase harms or produce results with little translation potential, among other challenges.
  • SBS researchers are frequently trained in pre-1990s methods, leaving them ill-equipped to handle big unstructured data (e.g., internet-based data), complex data cleaning for administrative records, or specialized geospatial analyses.
SBS Research Lifecycle Graphic

The SBS Research Lifecycle

The SBS lifecycle’s emphasis on community partnerships and data justice to develop research questions, conduct research, and disseminate findings helps resolve this challenge, and can also help mitigate concerns that data science may neglect or harm community priorities.  SBS approaches are thus integrated in all elements of TADA’s training program.

The Solution: The TADA Program at Emory University

The Training in Advanced Data Analytics to End Drug-Related Harms (TADA) program is uniquely positioned as the only NIDA-funded T32 program that places the integration of SBS and data science at its core.