Estimating the economic consequences of substance use disorders (SUDs) is important for evaluating existing programs and new interventions. Policy makers in particular must weigh program effectiveness with scalability and sustainability considerations in deciding which programs to fund with limited resources. This study provides a comprehensive list of monetary conversion factors for a broad range of consequences, services, and outcomes, which can be used in economic evaluations of SUD interventions (primarily in the United States), including common co-occurring conditions such as HCV and HIV.
Economic measures were selected from standardized clinical assessment instruments that are used in randomized clinical trials and other research studies (e.g., quasi-experimental community-based projects) to evaluate the impact of SUD interventions. National datasets were also reviewed for additional SUD-related consequences, services, and outcomes. Monetary conversion factors were identified through a comprehensive literature review of published articles as well as targeted searches of other sources such as government reports.
Eight service/consequence/outcome domains were identified containing more than sixty monetizable measures of medical and behavioral health services, laboratory services, SUD treatment, social services, productivity outcomes, disability outcomes, criminal activity and criminal justice services, and infectious diseases consequences. Unit-specific monetary conversion factors are reported, along with upper and lower bound estimates, whenever possible.
Having an updated and standardized source of monetary conversion factors will facilitate and improve future economic evaluations of interventions targeting SUDs and other risky behaviors. This exercise should be repeated periodically as new sources of data become available to maintain the timeliness, comprehensiveness, and quality of these estimates.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 15. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 January 2019.
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#2,707,346
of 28,829,220 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
#316
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Outputs of similar age
#43,841
of 333,431 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
#4
of 36 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 28,829,220 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,415 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.3. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.
