With @nytimes & 7 local papers we just published data-driven stories on a generation of Black men who fatally overdosed at the highest rates in their city for most of 1990-2022 Black men in dozens of cities like Baltimore Chicago SF and DC are affected🧵 https://t.co/gvmDyfiBkn

This coming on the heels of the city council's first overdose hearing (after multiple hearings cancelled last summer) where @PhyliciaPorter_ pushed the city to explain how it would address the crisis now, given the long timeline listed in public documents

Want to set the record straight - OIG’s request for oversight is .00002 not .00001 of this $4.78 billion budget. Similar to the difference between cut & deny - both yield ZERO positions to the citizens watchdog group that requested the new position to do our job. 🙏🏽🖤💛

Meta's public AI feed is one of the most bizarre choices I've seen in a while. Venmo already very publicly dropped their global feed after criticism users didn't realize it was public by default I've already seen a few vignettes a la Hang Do Thi Duc's

WE WON A PULITZER! A big first for @BaltimoreBanner & @nytimes Local Investigations Fellowship. Thank you to so many, especially those who trusted us with their stories, however painful or risky it may have been for them to share, because they knew it could make a difference.

NEW: @klaudiajaz and @Aisvarya17 ran 1600 queries across eight generative AI search tools to see how they cite news content. They all did pretty poorly. @CJR @columbiajourn https://t.co/M3gO728LLO

I'm honored to receive a Polk award for covering Baltimore City's overdose crisis alongside @AlissaZhu and @JessMGallagher I hope that with continued attention, recognition, and pressure @MayorBMScott and @BaltCityHall will finally discuss our city's issue in public view

In the past year of reporting on overdoses in Baltimore, a treatment program kept coming up. We looked into it: At least 13 deaths deaths since 2022. This year a mom died, then her baby starved. It operated in the shadows & got paid millions by the state.

It's a phenomenal story uncovering the tip of a terrible iceberg of treatment issues in Baltimore City and Maryland occurring in the largely unregulated cottage industry of low-intensity residential treatment programs Please read it.

I also want to post @AlissaZhu @JessMGallagher and @mercohn's story today about PHA Healthcare in Baltimore which collected millions in Medicaid $ while 13 clients fatally overdosed since 2022 other treatments failures and how MD allowed this to happen https://t.co/fCd8gKapdD

as a statistician, i feel lucky to see my data analysis underpin a series of stories clarifying the first 30 years of the American overdose crisis You'll hear people say 'everyone started caring about overdose when white people started dying,' and I think our work agrees

There were effectively two crises: One in the dozens of cities we found where this generation of Black men has always overdosed at high rates (left) and one outside these cities where white people overdosed at higher rates (right) Only one of these crises got real attention

This didn't make it, but Black men in these cities overdose at such high rates that national numbers show them as hardest hit for most of the last 30 years While attention focused on the (serious) rural crisis during the prescription drug wave, this group was actually harder hit

They’re gone now,” said Rogers’ sister Angela Faith McPeters. “...dying from the fentanyl that’s been put into that community. People are laughing at them because they’re Black people: ‘Who cares? You know, who really cares about the Black man killing himself off?’” @sfstandard

@Suntimes found there is no focused effort in ~$1.3b of opioid settlement money for older Black men despite the heavy death toll @51stnews found private insurance companies and Medicare still regularly deny coverage of med buprenorphine, which reduces opioid drug dependency

great partner quotes: This is "a generation that had really been constructed [by policymakers] as the criminal drug user during the 1980s"- Katherine McLean professor at Penn State. “It’s not hard to follow how this group would be disproportionately at risk now” @PublicSourcePA

In Baltimore, @AlissaZhu @JessMGallagher and I investigated how and why overdoses hit Black men born from '51-'70 Now @Suntimes @PublicSourcePA @sfstandard @starledger @PhillyInquirer and @51stnews have done the same in their cities with @BigLocalNews @BaltimoreBanner @nytimes

Chicago's chart ^^^, Baltimore's, Newark's, and DC's show that the highest overdose rates followed this generation as they aged from 1990 through today While rates today are astronomical because of synthetic opioids, this generation has been overdosing their entire adult lives

As @AlissaZhu, @FurrierTranform, @JessMGallagher found, people in Baltimore have been dying of overdoses at a rate never before seen in a major city, and City Hall is doing nothing meaningful about it. Yesterday, the mayor shut down a public hearing on it

There are three things that are shown to reduce overdoses says Erin Russell, a harm reduction consultant demonstrating, Naloxone Low threshold treatment Overdose prevention sites "And the city could be doing a better job of all three"