What People Are Saying About the Alcohol Cost Calculator
This excellent new tool will be invaluable in efforts to educate the American public and businesses about the impact of alcohol abuse. Using this calculator, businesses will be able to quantify the economic costs of untreated alcohol abuse and hopefully will take steps to provide treatment for their employees.
— The
Honorable Jim Ramstad
U.S. House of Representatives
The Alcohol Cost Calculator makes it possible to quantify what employers and employees already know anecdotally. Treating alcohol problems is an important way for employers to get the greatest possible value in their health care purchasing.
— Becky J. Cherney
Chair
National Business Coalition on Health
Employers are uniquely positioned to affect the attitudes, behaviors and lifestyles of employees, their families and the communities where they live and work. With the Alcohol Cost Calculator, workplace access to employee alcohol awareness education, as well as other preventive measures such as supervisory training, counseling, and testing services, employees will be more likely to make healthy choices. In turn, employees will be more effective and productive at their place of employment and will encourage healthy attitudes and behaviors in their children, spouses, friends and co-workers.
— Major General Arthur T. Dean
Chairman and
CEO
Community Anti-Drug Coalitions ofAmerica (CADCA)
The Alcohol Cost Calculator gives employers reliable quantitative evidence of alcohol’s impact on their workforces. This tool will provide the business case to prevent and appropriately treat alcohol abuse to reduce its cost and health effects.
— Helen Darling
President
Washington Business Group on Health
We are pleased that data derived from National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)-supported research were used to produce a tool that employers can use to understand the impact of alcohol on the health of their businesses and their employees.
— Ting-Kai Li, M.D.
Director
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
The data analyzed by Ensuring Solutions came from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Eighty percent of problem drinkers are employed. Companies can address alcohol abuse by combining it with other workplace health prevention activities. The earlier you intervene with problem drinking before a person loses a job or a family the more likely treatment will be successful.
— Charles Curie
Administrator
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
The impact of substance abuse goes far beyond the physical and emotional devastation visited on users and their loved ones. The economic impact of this problem is staggering, and many in the business community are unaware of just how close to home that impact strikes.
Perhaps because it's legal, alcohol is the most widely used drug in America and the economic costs of that reality cut across every business. The Alcohol Cost Calculator, created by the Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems program at the George Washington University Medical Center, is a valuable awareness tool every business can use to see how problem drinking can impair its bottom line. That's critical, because awareness of the impact of substance abuse is the first step to doing something positive about it - and getting more Americans to reject substance abuse is our bottom line.
— Steve Pasierb
President and CEO
Partnership for a Drug-Free America
We urge employers to use The Alcohol Cost Calculator to get a true picture of the toll that untreated and ignored alcohol problems are taking on their workforce. We encourage employees to use www.alcoholscreening.org for a confidential self-assessment of the toll that alcohol may be taking on their own health. Together, these tools provide workers and employers with new information and actions they can take to improve their health and productivity.
— David Rosenbloom
Director
Join Together
Boston University School of Public Health
We applaud the release of The Alcohol Cost Calculator during Alcohol Awareness Month, sponsored by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence since 1987. It is an important new tool to reach businesses and the public with information about an often ignored, treatable disease. We urge companies to use it year-round and take steps to encourage the treatment of alcoholism.
— Stacia Murphy
President
The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence
As one of the largest private employers in Washington, DC, The George Washington University encourages all employers to use The Alcohol Cost Calculator, developed by researchers at our Medical Center, to examine the hidden costs of alcohol abuse. It will give them new insight into the underlying causes of absenteeism and rising health care costs and steps they can take to address them.
— Susan B. Kaplan
Associate Vice President for Human Resources
The George Washington University
The Alcohol Cost Calculator is incredibly valuable and provides a useful tool to businesses in helping them better understand the toll that untreated alcohol addiction has in their workplace. Businesses that use this calculator will understand the prevalence of the problem and the loss in productivity they are experiencing due to untreated alcohol addiction. Hopefully this will cause them to take a look at their benefit packages to make sure that they are providing the appropriate health insurance coverage for treating this disease.
— Pamela Greenberg, M.P.P.
Executive Director
American Managed Behavioral Healthcare Association (AMBHA)
