By Shannon Turgeon
Photography by Rayni Shiring, University of Pittsburgh
Many people are familiar with “Mr. Yuk,” the green, scowling face symbol commonly used to warn children away from toxic household products.
However, not everyone knows that Mr. Yuk was created at the Pittsburgh Poison Center (PPC), one of 53 accredited poison centers around the country where health care workers with specialty training in toxicology assist people during poisoning emergencies.
“Members of the public can call us for free about anything,” said Amanda Korenoski (pictured right), assistant professor of pharmacy and therapeutics, University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy, and director of the poison center since 2015. “It could be something they were exposed to, they took double their medication or someone else’s medication, or a kid got into something under the sink. Providers reach out when they have a patient at the bedside. All those calls come into us,” she said.
PPC covers Western and Central Pennsylvania and responded to nearly 26,000 potentially toxic human exposures in 2025.
The poison center also has two other core functions: to educate the communities it serves and to provide toxicosurveillance, which involves collecting and analyzing data to identify trends and predict emerging public health threats related to poisoning.
While the center serves a vital role in the region, it—along with poison centers around the country—is facing funding challenges, in part because it can be difficult to effectively measure the impact that poison centers have on local health systems as a whole.
So Korenoski approached Kangho Suh (pictured left), assistant professor of pharmacy and therapeutics, School of Pharmacy, who specializes in health economics and outcomes research.
“We wanted to capture cost savings related to the work that the poison center does, to be another indicator of the impact that we have as an important safety net in the health care system,” said Korenoski.
Together, Korenoski and Suh developed a model to estimate the health care costs that are avoided through consultation with the PPC.
“We’re showing a counterfactual world in which the PPC didn’t exist—What would have happened? And as a result of the poison center being here, how much downstream health care costs are we avoiding or averting?” said Suh.
Korenoski and Suh developed the model by using National Poison Data System (NPDS) data from the PPC’s 44-county service region. The data tracked what happened to real patients after they contacted the PPC (such as traveling to a health care facility via ambulance or waiting at home).
They used this data to demonstrate what typically happens in poisoning emergencies as a result of the poison center being available to step in.
Korenoski and Suh then built the counterfactual scenario from a PPC survey in which 400 callers were asked what they would have done without access to a poison center.
Existing literature on health care costs, along with estimates of operating costs for running the center, was used to determine total costs in both the actual and counterfactual scenarios.
The study is unique because all the data used is specific to the area that PPC serves.
“It ties together a truly contemporary picture of what’s happening in our region, for the people we serve,” said Korenoski.
The study found that every dollar that goes into running the poison center equates to nearly $12 in avoided health care costs. The net annual cost avoidance equated to nearly $35 million.
Korenoski and the PPC team have recently been focusing on modernizing the center’s services—working to implement text message and internet chat applications to reach people who may not want to call for help via the phone.
She hopes that the results of this study will help advance these efforts and show what the center could accomplish with greater capacity.
“We’re returning $12 for every dollar invested, but there’s so much more we could do with the right resources. So we’re using this number as objective data, in addition to all the stories and other examples we have for why the poison center is an important part of the health care system: because we have the experts, we already exist 24/7, and we have the infrastructure. There’s a lot more we could do to expand, and that cost-avoidance number could grow even further,” she said.
You can reach your region’s poison center by calling 1-800-222-1222.