Prevalence of problematic drug use in Scotland
- Drugs
Estimates of the prevalence of problematic opioid use in Scotland were recently published by Public Health Scotland.
This ‘Official Statistics in Development’ report was the first published output from a public health surveillance collaboration which was commissioned by the Scottish Government between:
- Public Health Scotland
- the University of Bristol
- Glasgow Caledonian University
This report provides estimates for Scotland and three NHS Boards (Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lothian and Tayside).
These estimates are provided by:
- sex (female, male)
- age group (15 to 34, 35 to 49 and 50 to 64 years)
- financial year (2014/15 to 2019/20)
About the project
The project used:
- routinely collected linked data
- statistical modelling
This estimated and monitored the number of people in Scotland who used opioids problematically.
The findings will inform Scottish Government and PHS’s response to the drug-related deaths epidemic in Scotland.
The findings can also be used by:
- other policy makers
- practitioners
- patient groups
- citizens in Scotland and elsewhere
Methods of the project
All estimates in this report were calculated using a recently developed Bayesian statistical modelling approach: Multi-Parameter Estimation of Prevalence (MPEP).
This statistical modelling approach was developed by Dr Hayley Jones at the University of Bristol.
This new methodology helps to address some of the biases and drawbacks of the previous estimation method. The previous method was known as capture-recapture.
Further details about the MPEP methodology can be found in Appendix 2 of the report and a forthcoming accompanying journal article.
Data sources
The project used linked data from the Scottish Public Health Drug Linkage Programme.
This work aims to construct a linked dataset based on a cohort of people who were identified by drug-related health activity between 1 April 2009 and the present day.
Further details about the data used can be found in Appendix 1 of the report.
Further stages of the prevalence work will incorporate additional drug-related data to estimate:
- opioid prevalence in additional NHS Boards
- opioid prevalence in additional financial years
- the prevalence of other forms of problematic drug use