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Saratoga County unveils poison-control dashboard to track local exposures
Summary
County public health staff demonstrated an interactive dashboard that uses Upstate Poison Control Center call data to map exposures by ZIP code, age and substance, and to guide prevention efforts.
Saratoga County public health officials on April 1 demonstrated a new poison-control data dashboard that displays calls from county residents to the Upstate Poison Control Center and breaks them down by ZIP code, age group, substance category and outcome.
County epidemiologist Steven Sheridan told the Health and Human Services Committee the dashboard is updated monthly and is intended to help the county and community partners target prevention and outreach. "This is our poison data dashboard," Sheridan said. "It's something that we're excited about. ... This information comes from calls from Saratoga County to the Upstate Poison Center."
The dashboard shows trends from 2018 through 2025 and allows users to filter exposures by substance category (for example, cannabis, opioids, personal care products), by age group and by location of exposure. Sheridan said the dashboard counts 289 calls to the Upstate Poison Control Center so far this year and that the county typically receives about 1,100 calls per year. He said more than 90% of recorded exposures occur at the individual's residence and about 40% of exposures are children age 5 and younger. The most frequent exposure categories this year were personal care products, pain medicines and cleaning supplies.
Dr. Kools, public health director, said the county is the only county in New York that is providing this surveillance data directly from poison center calls and that the dashboard will help community-based organizations and schools tailor their messaging. "If we don't draw attention to it, or we don't draw attention to the fact that it's happening here in Saratoga County, you may miss an opportunity to really save a life," Dr. Kools said.
Sheridan demonstrated interactive features including a ZIP-code map shaded by calls per 100,000 residents, month-by-month charts and tables showing exposure route and outcome. He said the dashboard includes links to poison-center resources, definitions of exposure categories and downloadable PDFs describing category definitions. The county plans to present the dashboard methodology to the New York State Association of County Health Officials so other counties can replicate or adapt it.
The dashboard is hosted on the county health department's community health data hub and is updated during the first week of each month with the prior month's data. The county also reminded residents that the poison-control number is posted on the health department website.
