Scientific Meetings for Advancing Economic Analyses of Substance Abuse Prevention

描述（由申请人提供）：促进药物滥用预防经济分析的科学会议。美国国立卫生研究院 (NIH) 资助的过去 25 年的研究表明，早期干预可以显着改变导致药物滥用和成瘾的适应不良发育轨迹。这些发现反过来又催生了许多基于证据的预防干预措施 (EBPI)，以解决药物滥用这一主要公共卫生问题。然而，由于社区努力证明对高质量预防所需的基础设施和能力进行投资的合理性，许多此类干预措施“束之高阁” 编程。因此，如果社区能够首先相信 EBPI 代表了一项合理的当地投资，那么该领域现在正处于大幅改善社会解决药物滥用问题的风口浪尖。除非有强有力的证据表明，将稀缺资源分配给这些计划是对公共资金的有效利用——因为该计划的收益大于其成本——否则基于发展的预防工作将继续在公共卫生中发挥有限的作用。寻找此类证据需要对预防工作进行高质量的经济评估。为了成功地进行此类评估，预防科学家需要通过采用新颖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当前的研究能力。我们建议利用R13“会议和科学会议支持”机制（PA-12-212）召开一系列三场会议，召集预防科学家和经济学家的核心小组，以推进对药物滥用预防的经济评估。主要专家将齐聚一堂，以（1）培养可持续的跨学科研究团队，（2）确定加强成本和效益估算的分析方法，以及（3）围绕利用效益成本分析来建立有效的预防工作提供指导。

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.