A health official in Springfield, Massachusetts, said she was surprised by a jump in the number of opioid overdose deaths in the city, and she doesn't know why it happened.
Annual deaths from opioid overdoses in Springfield almost doubled in 2018 — from 56 to 108. That's while they declined in a majority of cities and towns across the state.
City Health and Human Services Commissioner Helen Caulton-Harris said she doesn't have enough information to explain what caused the increase.
"We have numbers that are raw numbers, but the numbers really don't tell the story," she said. "I don't have the information on which neighborhoods were most impacted, race ethnicity information."
Copyright 2019 New England Public Media
