Number of older adults living with opioid use disorder in Ontario more than doubles over eight years, new report finds

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Add as preferred source Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain The number of Ontarians aged 55 and older with health care interactions related to opioid use disorder (OUD) more than doubled between 2017 and 2025, according to a new report published by the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network (ODPRN), based at St. Michael's Hospital.

Tara Gomes, Ph.D., and Bisola Hamzat, MSc, authored the report in collaboration with community partners and people with lived experience, drawing on population-based health care data from ICES.

They used several datasets from ICES to identify older adults with OUD and opioid-related deaths, including hospital and home care databases, coroners' death investigations, and pharmacy dispensing data.