How do you fix a problem if you don't know its size?
Many states — including some that have been hardest hit by the opioid crisis — don't know how many of their youngest residents each year are born physically dependent on those drugs. They rely on estimates.
Pennsylvania is one of those states. Ted Dallas, head of Pennsylvania's Department of Human Services, calls the information he's working with "reasonably good."
"Data is never pristine when you're dealing with 2.7 million people," he says. "Do I think it gives you a good picture of the issues that are out there? Yes."
[For more of this story, written by Ben Allen, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...rug-dependent-babies]
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