St Luke’s International University Graduate School of Public Health (SLGSPH) master’s graduate Sayuri Fujita-Imazu has published her master’s research in The Lancet eClinical Medicine.

This research, entitled Evolving trends in drug overdose mortality in the USA from 2000 to 2020: an age-period-cohort analysis, was conducted in collaboration with co-authors from Sun Yat Sen University in China. It used national vital registration data on deaths from the USA for the years 2000 to 2020 to show that there has been a rapid increase in drug overdose mortality in that country, and that this increase has been fastest in Black Americans and Americans born after 1975. Ms. Fujita-Imazu and her colleagues argue that rapid action is needed to counter the USA’s opioid overdose crisis, which is now affecting younger people and causing a rapidly growing burden of disease. This paper represents an important contribution by one of SLGSPH’s graduate students to a significant public health debate in the USA, and shows how our students engage with key issues in global health through their timely, high quality research.

The article can be read for free here: