202835 A Cost Calculator to Project the Cost-Effectiveness of Community Water Fluoridation

Monday, November 9, 2009

Susan O. Griffin, PhD , DOH, CDC, Atlanta, GA
Kari Jones, PhD , Quantitative Health Research, Inc., Elberton, GA
Reidar Hagtvedt, PhD , Department of Finance and Management Science, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
Objective: To demonstrate a public-domain Cost Calculator (CC) that allows communities with limited data and analytical capabilities to project the cost-effectiveness of fluoridating the water in their community.

Methods: The CC uses methodologies recommended by the Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. Users may enter community-specific values for cost and effectiveness parameters (e.g. caries increment, cost of a restoration, and population age distribution) or accept default values obtained from national surveys and published studies specific to the size of the community and region where the community is located.

Results: The CC walks the user through calculation of the annual per person fluoridation cost, resulting averted treatment and productivity costs, and annual per person net cost (fluoridation costs less averted treatment and productivity costs). Finally, the CC projects the annual per person net cost to avert one cavity attributable to community water fluoridation (CWF). Users may vary the input or default parameter estimates to perform sensitivity analysis. Using default parameters the CC found CWF to be cost-saving in every region of the U.S.

Conclusions: In a time of declining public health resources it is important to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of community based prevention. The CC helps community planners to generate concrete data to promote implementation of this cost effective public

Learning Objectives:
• Describe the information required to estimate cost effectiveness using the community water fluoridation (CWF) Cost Calculator. • Discuss how communities can use the CWF Cost Calculator projections to promote fluoridation. • Using the CWF Cost Calculator, analyze a real or hypothetical community’s cost effectiveness of implementing CWF.

Keywords: Oral Health Outcomes, Decision-Making

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I made significant contributions to the study design and conduct. I was first author on the peer reviewed article from which many of the paramaters for this cost calculator were obtained.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Efforts to Sustain Community Water Fluoridation Programs
See more of: Oral Health