Research & Resources

Cost of Community Interventions to Prevent Underage Drinking and Prescription Drug Misuse

This paper analyzes estimates of typical real-world costs to implement community interventions focused on preventing underage drinking and prescription drug misuse. Cost data was reported by more than 400 community subrecipients participating in a national cross-site evaluation of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Strategic Prevention Framework Partnerships for Success grant program from 2013–2017. Annual ongoing implementation was found to be typically more costly than intervention start-up. Costs were generally similar for population-level interventions, such as information dissemination and environmental strategies, and individual-level interventions, such as prevention education and positive alternative activities. However, population-level interventions reached considerably more people and, consequently, had much lower per-person costs. Employees contributed the most to intervention costs, followed by intervention supplies and overhead. Start-up costs for initial training and costs for incentives, ongoing training, and in-kind contributions (nonlabor) during ongoing implementation were not typically reported. Results from this study can be used to inform prevention planning by providing detailed information about the costs of classes of community interventions.
This paper, “A National Cost Analysis of Community Interventions to Prevent Underage Drinking and Prescription Drug Misuse,” was funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and published in the journal Prevention science. 
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