Reporter
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Data journalist Leonardo Castaneda offers reporters a detailed tutorial on how to analyze — and then map — data from any county's medical examiner's office on opioid-related deaths.
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A data-driven look at opioid addiction in San Diego found that old assumptions about addiction hotspots were outdated. Reporter Leo Castaneda shares this and other field lessons he learned along the way.
Opioid addiction has claimed thousands of lives in San Diego County. Understanding who is dying and how addiction has changed over the last 15 years is central to confronting the addiction epidemic.
Working with data, it’s often easy to forget that each entry represents a real human being. An opioid abuse epidemic like the one taking place in San Diego isn’t just a statistically significant outlier — it’s a series of individual human tragedies.
