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Value of Overdoses Averted Calculator

A New Tool for Estimating the Economic Value of Overdoses Averted

Demonstrating the economic value of an intervention can be difficult, especially when the benefits include overdoses that never happen. The HD2A Modeling and Economic Resource Center (MERC) has developed the Value of Overdoses Averted Calculator to help research teams estimate the economic value of averting non-fatal and fatal overdoses through their interventions.

When an intervention prevents an overdose or links someone to opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment, some costs are avoided while others are newly incurred. The calculator brings these together in one place. It accounts for four sources of economic impact:

  • Immediate health care use avoided, such as emergency response, emergency department, and hospitalization costs
  • Future health care use, such as changes tied to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD)
  • Future societal costs, most often criminal-legal system costs
  • The value of additional years of life gained when a fatal overdose is averted

Teams can customize inputs to reflect their own population and local costs, then compare their results against a set of default values. The tool estimates the value of a non-fatal overdose averted and a fatal overdose averted, with and without successful linkage to MOUD, so teams can represent a realistic range of outcomes.

The calculator is built for research projects that use non-fatal and fatal overdoses averted as effectiveness outcomes. It is also useful to any research or program team working to quantify the economic impact of overdose prevention and OUD treatment.

How the tool works:

The calculator is a Microsoft Excel workbook. Teams enter project-specific values on the inputs tab and view results on the outputs tab, where customized estimates appear alongside default estimates for comparison. The accompanying guidance memo explains the underlying methods, data sources, and assumptions, including how the tool values years of life gained using the human capital approach recommended by the Second U.S. Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. All values are reported in 2024 U.S. dollars.

Getting started:

  • Download the guidance memo to understand the methods and assumptions behind the estimates.
  • Download the Excel calculator and enter your project’s values on the “Inputs – Enter Data Here” tab.
  • View your customized results on the “Outputs – See Calculations Here” tab, and compare them against the default values provided.

Downloads:

Feedback:

We welcome feedback on how well this tool supports your work. Please send comments to the MERC team at [email protected].

Acknowledgment:

Creation of this tool was supported in part by the NIH HEAL Data2Action Program: the Modeling and Economic Resource Center (MERC, U24DA057650).