Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement,

and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore.

Our goal is to bring evidence and experience

to illuminate critical public health issues.

If you have questions or ideas for us,

please send an email to Public Health Question at jh.h.

That's public health question at jhu.edu

for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call.

Today, we turn our attention to a milestone in the overdose crisis.

Recent news that the overdose death rate of black Americans is soaring and has passed the overdose death rate of white Americans.

Dr. Josh Sharfstein speaks to Dr. Keisha Solomon and Dr. Jason Gibbons, two postdoctoral

fellows at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who are focusing on this trend.

Let's listen.

Keisha Solomon, Jason Gibbons, thanks so much for joining me to talk about this urgent topic,

the increase in overdoses among black Americans.

Keisha, what did the data show?

Thank you for happiness.

The data show that the overdose death rates among black Americans surpass that of white Americans in 2020.

This is a sharp reversal of the situation a decade earlier when rates were twice as high for white Americans than black Americans.

For example, between 2013 and 2020, there was a five-fold increase in the rates of black

...