Rylee Blake

Jazmin Villanueva, Haylee De Santiago, Tryshelle Valtierra-Trujillo

Title: How Socioeconomic Factors Influence Opioid Addiction Rates in West Virginia

Abstract: Since 2000, death from drug overdose rates have risen in the United States (Planalp & Stewart, 2024). The majority of drug overdose deaths in the U.S. (75.6%) involve the use of opioids (National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, 2025). Current literature asserts that approximately 3.2% of American adults abuse opioids and the highest rate of abuse is in the state of West Virginia (National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, 2025; Saloner et al., 2019). Research has been done to address what is influencing the high rates of opioid use. However there is a gap in the data when it comes to researching how socioeconomic factors, such as poverty, low-income households, unemployment, lack of access to healthcare, and education, play a role in rates of opioid use. Our research aims to address this gap through a quantitative study, using the Opioid Risk Tool (ORT), a self-reporting measure to assess risk for opioid abuse in adults. We aim to do this through a secondary data analysis to assess which socioeconomic factors impact the rates of opioid use the most. We anticipate discovering which specific socioeconomic factors increase the risk for opioid use. With this, we hope to begin to understand why previous measures to treat opioid use in West Virginia have been unsuccessful in reducing opioid use in the past, and potentially use this information to guide other research in this field.