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Monday, November 1, 2010

Conducting economic evaluations of screening and brief intervention for hazardous drinking: Methods and evidence to date for informing policy



Many policy review articles have concluded that alcohol screening and brief intervention (SBI) is both cost-effective and cost-beneficial. Yet a recent cost-effectiveness review for the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence suggests that these conclusions may be premature.
This article offers a brief synopsis of the various types of economic analyses that may be applied to SBI, including cost analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis, cost-benefit analysis and other types of economic evaluation. 

A brief overview of methodological issues is provided, and examples from the SBI evaluation literature are provided.

The current evidence base is insufficient to draw firm conclusions about the cost, cost-effectiveness or cost-benefit of SBI and about the impact of SBI on health-care utilisation.

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