Substance Misuse Prevention and Economic Analysis: Challenges and Opportunities Regarding International Utility

Abstract

Economic analyses of substance misuse prevention assess the intervention cost necessary to achieve a particular outcome, and thereby provide an additional dimension for evaluating prevention programming. This article reviews several types of economic analysis, considers how they can be applied to substance misuse prevention, and discusses challenges to enhancing their international relevance, particularly their usefulness for informing policy decisions. Important first steps taken to address these challenges are presented, including the disease burden concept and the development of generalized cost-effectiveness, advances that facilitate international policy discussions by providing a common framework for evaluating health care needs and program effects.

Keywords :

• Economic analysis
• cost-effectiveness
• cost utility
• cost benefit
• prevention
• alcohol
• drugs
• substance misuse
• policy
• international

THE AUTHORS

Max Guyll is an Assistant Professor of psychology at Department of Psychology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA. He received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Rutgers University in 1998. His research broadly addresses topics related to health psychology, focusing on particular issues related to prevention, economic analysis, stress, personality, and physiologic reactivity.

Richard Spoth, Ph.D., is the F. Wendell Miller Senior Prevention Scientist and Director of the Partnerships in Prevention Science Institute at Iowa State University, Ames, IA. He provides oversight for interrelated projects addressing the economic benefits of universal preventive interventions, factors influencing prevention program participation, program effectiveness, culturally competent programming, and community-university partnership-based dissemination of evidence-based programs.

Marilyn A. Cornish received her M.S. in psychology from Iowa State University, Ames, IA, and is currently a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Iowa State University. Her research interests include the processes and outcomes of counseling and other interventions, diversity factors in counseling, and stigma associated with help-seeking behaviors.