VA Creates Opioid Cost Calculator To Measure Opioid Crisis

Introduction

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and the Center for Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) have cooperated to create an opioid cost calculator.

The calculator calculates how much the opioid crisis costs Virginians in a variety of areas, including lost employment, healthcare, crime, household expenses, state expenses, and federal spending.

The data from the calculator gives a more full picture of Virginia's deadly opioid problem. It will also help to support continuing work in preventive and reduction actions at the state and municipal levels, as well as move toward large-scale systemic change.

According to the state's health commissioner, knowing the effect of opioid addiction is a key step, and with this move, the state is getting closer to making changes that will help decrease and prevent opioid-related addiction, injury, and death.

The enormous costs associated with the Virginia opioid crisis, according to the interim director of the VCU Center on Society and Health, highlight the value of a comprehensive strategy that combines downstream interventions (e.g., emergency overdose care, addiction counselling) with upstream efforts (e.g., economic assistance to distressed communities, stronger social services, and support) combines systems for those in need) to facilitate the conditions that encourage drug use.

Each day in 2020, more than four Virginians perished from an opioid overdose. According to the cost estimate, the overall cost of the pandemic in 2020 will be $3.5 billion. The cost calculator displays the entire cost of the Virginia pandemic in dollars, as well as the cost by sector (labor, health care, crime), payer (households, state/local government, federal government), and location (counties and independent cities). Furthermore, this data is available as user-friendly data visualizations as well as downloadable reports and data tables.

The Centers for Disease Control and Preventive's (CDC) Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) initiative supported this study to prevent and reduce drug overdose fatalities in Virginia using a combination of monitoring and prevention techniques.

VDH remains committed to avoiding drug overdose-related injuries, fatalities, and infectious infections, as well as using public health data and monitoring to improve preventive and response operations.

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