Virginia Department of Health and VCU Partner to Launch Opioid Cost Calculator – VCU News

Virginia Department of Health Staff

The Virginia Department of Health and the Center for Social and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University collaborated on the development of the Opioid Cost Calculator. This calculator presents estimated costs of the opioid epidemic’s impact on Virginians in multiple categories: lost workforce, health care, crime, household costs, state costs, and federal costs.

Calculator data more fully illustrates the devastating impact of the opioid epidemic in Virginia. It also supports ongoing efforts in prevention and reduction activities at the state and local levels and helps us move forward towards large-scale systemic change.

“Understanding the impact of opioid addiction is an important step. This understanding puts us closer to change that can help reduce and prevent opioid-related addiction, injury, and death.”

“The staggering costs associated with Virginia’s opioid crisis are a combination of downstream interventions (e.g. emergency overdose care, addiction counseling) and upstream efforts (economic relief to distressed communities, stronger social services and It emphasizes the value of a holistic strategy that combines support, support, and more,” said Dr. Derek Chapman, interim director of the VCU Center on Society and Health.

In 2020, an average of four Virginians died each day from an opioid drug overdose. A cost calculator shows the total cost of the 2020 epidemic to be $3.5 billion. The cost calculator not only shows the overall cost of the epidemic in Virginia in total dollars, but also by sector (labor, health, crime), payer (household, state/local, federal) and region (county). and independent cities).

Additionally, this data is available in easy-to-use data visualizations and downloadable reports and data tables.

This project was funded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Overdose Data to Action initiative to prevent and reduce drug overdose deaths in Virginia through a suite of surveillance and prevention strategies.