Scientific Meetings for Advancing Economic Analyses of Substance Abuse Prevention

描述（由申请人提供）：推进药物滥用预防经济分析的科学会议。在过去的25年里，NIH资助的研究已经确定，早期干预可以大大改变导致药物滥用和成瘾的适应不良的发展轨迹。这些发现，反过来，导致了许多循证预防干预措施（EBPI）的创建，以解决药物滥用的主要公共卫生问题。然而，许多这样的干预措施“搁置”，因为社区努力证明投资于高质量预防所需的基础设施和能力是合理的 编程.因此，如果社区首先能够确信EBPI代表了一种合理的地方投资，那么该领域现在就站在了大幅改善社会解决药物滥用问题的尖端。除非有充分的证据表明，将稀缺的资源分配给这些项目是对公共资金的有效利用，因为该项目的收益大于成本，否则以发展为基础的预防工作将继续在印尼的健康中发挥有限的作用。要找到这种证据，就需要对预防工作进行高质量的经济评价。为了成功地进行这种评估，预防科学家需要通过采用新的经济方法和观点以及与经济学家和政策分析师建立可持续的合作来增强目前的研究能力。我们建议利用R13“支持会议和科学会议”机制（PA-12-212）举行一系列三次会议，召集预防科学家和经济学家核心小组，推进对预防药物滥用的经济评价。主要专家将聚集在一起，以（1）培养一个可持续的跨学科研究团队，（2）确定分析方法，以加强成本和效益估计，（3）围绕使用效益-成本分析提供指导，以建立有效的预防工作。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Scientific Meetings for Advancing Economic Analyses of Substance Abuse Prevention. NIH-funded research over the last 25 years has established that early intervention can substantially alter maladaptive developmental trajectories that lead to substance abuse and addiction. These discoveries, in turn, have led to the creation of numerous evidence-based preventive interventions (EBPI) to address the major public health problem of substance abuse. Yet, many such interventions 'sit on the shelf' as communities struggle to justify investing in the infrastructure and capacity needed for high-quality prevention programming. Consequently, the field now stands on the cusp of substantially improving how society addresses substance abuse-if communities can first be convinced that EBPIs represent a sound local investment. Until robust evidence demonstrates that allocating scarce resources to these programs is an efficient use of public monies-in that the program's benefits outweigh their costs--developmentally-based prevention efforts will continue to play a limited role in publi health. Finding such evidence will require high-quality economic evaluations of prevention efforts. To carry out such evaluations successfully, prevention scientists will need to augment current research capacity by embracing novel economic methods and perspectives as well as building sustainable collaborations with economists and policy analysts. We propose to use the R13 'Support for Conferences and Scientific Meetings' mechanism (PA-12-212) to hold a series of three meetings to convene core groups of prevention scientists, and economists to advance economic evaluations of substance abuse prevention. Key experts will be brought together to (1) cultivate a sustainable interdisciplinary research team, (2) identify analytic approaches for strengthening cost and benefit estimates, and (3) provide guidance around employing benefit-cost analyses to build efficient prevention efforts.