Best practice in estimating the costs of alcohol – Recommendations for future studies (original) (raw)
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What's in a cost? Comparing economic and public health measures of alcohol's social costs
The New Zealand medical journal, 2012
Studies based on a cost of illness method frequently assert large social costs from a variety of risky activities, the harms from which most typically fall upon the risk-taker himself. Many of these costs are inadmissible in a standard economic framework; consequently, figures derived by the cost of illness method are not comparable with other economic notions of cost and are of very limited policy use.
The Global Economic Burden of Alcohol: a Review and Some Suggestions
Drug and Alcohol Review, 2006
Economic arguments for acting for health are increasingly important for policymakers, yet to date there has been no consideration of the likely economic burden of alcohol on the global level. A review of existing cost estimates was conducted, with each study disaggregated into different cost areas and the methodology of each element evaluated. The range of figures produced from more robust studies was then applied tentatively on the global level. The reviewed studies suggested a range of estimates of 1.3 – 3.3% of total health costs, 6.4 – 14.4% of total public order and safety costs, 0.3 – 1.4% of GDP for criminal damage costs, 1.0 – 1.7% of GDP for drink-driving costs, and 2.7 – 10.9% of GDP for work-place costs (absenteeism, unemployment and premature mortality). On a global level, this suggests costs in the range of $210 – 665 billion in 2002. These figures cannot be understood without considering simultaneously six key problems: (i) the methods used by each study; (ii) who pays these costs; (iii) the ‘economic benefits’ of premature deaths; (iv) establishing causality; (v) omitted costs; and (vi) the applicability of developed country estimates to developing countries. Alcohol exerts a considerable economic burden worldwide, although the exact level of this burden is a matter of debate and further research. Policymakers should consider economic issues alongside evidence of the cost-effectiveness of particular policy options in improving health, such as in the WHO’s CHOICE project.
Great Mekong Sub-region Initiative e-Journal of Public Health (GMSI-eJPH), 2012
Introduction: Alcohol is an important risk factor for disease and injury. A number of strategies are available for both treating and preventing alcohol-related harm. The purpose of the presentation will be to discuss the results of the recently completed cost-effectiveness analysis of interventions to reduce the burden of harm associated with alcohol misuse in Australia (ACE-Alcohol). Methods: Cost-effectiveness analysis is based on one-off intervention in the first year, with all costs and health outcomes evaluated over the lifetime ...
The economic impact of alcohol consumption: a systematic review
Substance Abuse Treatment Prevention and Policy, 2009
Background: Information on the economic impact of alcohol consumption can provide important evidence in supporting policies to reduce its associated harm. To date, several studies on the economic costs of alcohol consumption have been conducted worldwide. This study aims to review the economic impact of alcohol worldwide, summarizing the state of knowledge with regard to two elements: (1) cost components included in the estimation; (2) the methodologies employed in works conducted to date.
Alcohol Abuse: Cost Effectiveness and the Economic Impact of Policies and Programs
If the analysis of cost and of the effectiveness of interventions in the area of alcohol abuse were simple, interventions would also be simple. The fact that interventions are demonstrably difficult, and that it is no simple matter even to demonstrate any intervention effect at all, should warn us that work on costeffectiveness cannot profitably be conducted on the basis of the somewhat simplistic assumptions on which many previous attempts were founded. One such assumption has been the primacy of the message. Knowledge of health risk is comparatively easy to assess, and if it could be assumed that knowledge of the risks of a particular behavior translated seamlessly into an avoidance of that behavior, then population surveys would translate with comparative ease into numerical data on the effect of any particular intervention. Regrettably, this is not so. Information, even information systematized into education and resulting in communication, does not necessarily alter behavior. Behavior is influenced by such a multiplicity of personal, social, and environmental factors that it becomes increasingly difficult to determine the influence of any intervention on any outcome. Another such assumption has been the universal undesirability of alcohol. Cost analyses of alcohol abuse have hitherto been largely conducted as if alcohol were a substance like tobacco, with no threshold toxicity level and no health benefits. This approach merged alcohol abuse, which was by definition undesirable, with total alcohol use, and simply modified the latter to extract the former. Alcohol abuse estimates have thus been made on the basis of total consumption statistics 1 . , for example, estimated that if all drinkers consumed no more than the recommended limit, consumption would fall by 30 percent and, therefore, 1 Or, in some studies, on production statistics; the relation between national production statistics and national consumption statistics, the latter mainly derived from selfreport data of variable accuracy, is also problematic.
Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of policies and programmes to reduce the harm caused by alcohol
The Lancet, 2009
This paper reviews the evidence for the eff ectiveness and cost-eff ectiveness of policies and programmes to reduce the harm caused by alcohol, in the areas of education and information, the health sector, community action, driving while under the infl uence of alcohol (drink-driving), availability, marketing, pricing, harm reduction, and illegally and informally produced alcohol. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses show that policies regulating the environment in which alcohol is marketed (particularly its price and availability) are eff ective in reducing alcohol-related harm. Enforced legislative measures to reduce drink-driving and individually directed interventions to already at-risk drinkers are also eff ective. However, school-based education does not reduce alcohol-related harm, although public information and education-type programmes have a role in providing information and in increasing attention and acceptance of alcohol on political and public agendas. Making alcohol more expensive and less available, and banning alcohol advertising, are highly cost-eff ective strategies to reduce harm. In settings with high amounts of unrecorded production and consumption, increasing the proportion of alcohol that is taxed could be a more eff ective pricing policy than a simple increase in tax.
PsycEXTRA Dataset
Introduction 1 2. A brief summary of methodological issues 3 3. The aggregate social costs of alcohol 5 4. Estimating the Feasible Minimum in practice 7 4.1 The Arcadian Normal 7 4.2 Exposure-based comparators 9 4.3 The effectiveness of interventions 11 4.3.1 The basis for the choice of effective policies 11 4.3.2 Difficulties in aggregating the economic benefits of individual policies 4.3.3 Retaining the protective health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption 5. The intervention choices 5.1 Alcohol taxation 5.1.1 Potential reductions in social costs from the use of alcohol taxation 5.2 Bans on alcohol advertising 5.2.1 Potential reductions in social costs resulting from advertising bans 5.2.2 The impact of alcohol advertising bans on the overall social costs of alcohol abuse 5.2.3 The estimated impact of alcohol advertising bans on the social costs of alcohol-attributable road accidents 5.2.4 Maintaining advertising bans iv 5.3 Measures to reduce drink driving 5.3.1 Greater enforcement of random breath testing 5.3.2 Reducing the blood alcohol concentration level 5.3.3 Conclusions from the research evidence 5.3.4 Potential reductions in social costs from anti-drink-driving policies 5.4 Brief interventions for reducing hazardous alcohol consumption 5.4.1 The impact of brief interventions on the overall social costs of alcohol abuse 6. Effective interventions whose benefits cannot be evaluated 6.1 Control of drinking environments 6.2 Alcohol ignition locks 6.3 Guidelines for low-risk drinking 6.4 Standard drinks labelling and health warnings on drinks containers 6.5 Other interventions 7. Summary of results 8. Conclusions 8.1 Policy implications 8.2 Methodological implications 9. Research recommendations 9.1 Policy effectiveness 9.2 Alcohol demand elasticities 9.3 Time periods over which policy benefits accrue 9.4 The macroeconomic impact of alcohol interventions 9.5 Revision of the avoidable cost guidelines Appendix A. Methodological issues A1. The nature of avoidable costs A2. Reasons for estimating avoidable costs Priority for substance abuse expenditures Appropriate targeting of specific problems Identification of information gaps and research needs Provision of baseline measures to determine the efficiency of drug policies and programs
Cost benefit analyses of alcohol policy - a primer
1 Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of two or more courses of action. Last, J.M. Ed. A dictionary of epidemiology. 4 th Edition. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. A technique which seeks to identify the least cost option for meeting a particular objective . It enables prioritisation between options, but ultimately cannot assess whether an option is economically worthwhile. www.environmentagency.gov.uk/static/documents/Research/glossary\_777199.doc.
Methods for Estimating Avoidable Costs of Excessive Alcohol Consumption
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Background: Alcohol is a risk factor with serious consequences for society and individuals. This study aims to present methods and approaches that might be used to estimate the costs related to excessive alcohol consumption. It emphasizes the need for general methods and approaches that are easily applicable, because the level of digitalization and data availability vary across regions. The lack of data makes many methods inapplicable and useless. The ease of applicability will help to make cost-of-illness studies and their results comparable globally. Methods: This study is based on data from the Czech Republic in 2017. Drinking alcohol results in costs of healthcare, social care, law enforcement, and administrative costs of public authorities. To quantify the cost of drinking in the Czech Republic, the top-down approach, bottom-up approach, human capital approach and attributable fractions were used. Results: In 2017, the cost related to alcohol was estimated at 0.66% of the natio...