The cost-effectiveness of collegiate recovery programs

Abstract

Objective

To conduct a preliminary cost-effectiveness analysis of collegiate recovery programs in the United States and to create a tailorable cost-effectiveness calculator based on the preliminary cost-effectiveness model.

Methods

Cost-effectiveness was assessed with a base case, one-way sensitivity analyses, and probabilistic sensitivity analyses for the societal and health systems (institutions of higher education) perspectives, comparing CRPs to treatment as usual. Models were estimated using secondary data sources. A cost-effectiveness calculator was constructed using the models developed for the cost-effectiveness analysis.

Results

CRPs were found to be cost-effective across all models. Institutional and societal models were robust to changes in parameters.

Conclusions

CRPs are a cost-effective intervention and are cost-saving under certain conditions. A free online calculator developed form this analysis is available to estimate program-specific cost-effectiveness.

Keywords:

• Collegiate recovery programs
• cost-effectiveness analysis
• economic evaluation

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted as part of a Master of Public Health thesis project at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas, supervised by Dr. Andrew Springer, Dr. H. Shelton Brown, III, and Dr. Lori Holleran Steiker. The data sets from which an aggregate CRP was modeled were provided by Dr. Jeff Jones and Emily Eisenhart, and by Transforming Youth Recovery.^16,30 The National Orientation Directors Association (NODA) provided data on new student orientation budgets from the 2017 NODA Databank.⁴²

Conflict of interest disclosure

We do not have any conflict of interest that could inappropriately influence our work. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States of America and received approval from the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (IRB # HSC- SPH-18-1052).

Funding

No external funding supported this research.

Data availability statement

While not all secondary data sources are available to the public, all parameters used in this analysis are available at https://collegiaterecovery.org/media/ along with the cost-effectiveness calculator.