Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #112419

Monique A. Sheppard, PhD, Ted R. Miller, PhD, Douglas L. Hill, PhD, and Elizabeth A. Langston. Children's Safety Network, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Economics and Data Analysis Resource Center, 11710 Beltsville Drive, Suite 300, Calverton, MD 20705-3102, 301-755-2728, sheppard@pire.org

Interpersonal violence, substance abuse, impaired driving, burns, and poisonings are all major sources of injury with considerable cost to society. Interventions have been designed to reduce many of these sources of injury; however some interventions are more effective than others. Given the limited resources available for prevention programs, it is important to identify which programs and policies produce the most benefit for the resources invested in them.

The Children's Safety Network Economic and Data Analysis Resource Center has produced a series of fact sheets to summarize the cost benefit analyses of different interventions on these issues. Interventions can be evaluated in terms of how much they cost per unit of intervention and how much benefit they produce in terms of costs averted. These fact sheets will help injury prevention professionals, health educators, and policy makers see what interventions have been more effective, and which produce the most benefit for the amount spent on them.

Some relatively inexpensive interventions (e.g., calls to Poison Control Centers) produce measurable benefits and are cost efficient. Other more expensive interventions produce greater benefits (e.g. a family centered intervention to reduce substance use). In some cases an intervention is only cost efficient with the appropriate target audience (e.g., fall prevention for elderly at high risk for falls). From these fact sheets, injury prevention professionals, health educators, and policy makers can see what programs and policies have been effective in other areas and use this information in choosing which programs to implement in their own area.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the terminology of cost benefit analyses and how cost benefit analyses can be used to evaluate interventions.
• Understand how cost benefit analyses of different interventions can help guide program development and policy.
• Identify which interventions provide the most benefit for the money invested.

Keywords: Injury Prevention, Cost-Effectiveness

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.