Drug overdose deaths seen in a generation

For NYT’s the Upshot, Josh Katz, Margot Sanger-Katz, and Nick Thieme report on the growing prevalence of drug overdose deaths among a generation of black men. This was a collaboration with Big Local News and The Baltimore Banner, who culled and analyzed overdose data to share with other newsrooms.

A heatmap with time on the x-axis and age on the y-axis provides a visual anchor. (Here’s a wideout view for different causes of death.) The first views setup how to read the patterns, which makes the trend among the cohort more obvious.