New initiative launched to improve access to alcohol treatment.

A grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts has helped establish a new program to develop research-based information and tools that will help communities, employers, schools, and policy makers curb the billions of dollars in avoidable costs associated with alcohol use and improve access to treatment for those who need it.

The initiative, Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems, is based at the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Ensuring Solutions publishes an e-newsletter (to subscribe, visit www.ensuringsolutions.org on the Internet) as well as reports, issue briefs, and primers that focus on specific aspects of alcohol-related problems and highlight strategies that companies and communities have used to manage alcohol issues.

The following publications are available for downloading from the Ensuring Solutions Web page:

Research Reports

#1 Workplace Solutions: Treating Alcohol Problems Through Employment-Based Health Insurance

Primers

#1 Treating Alcoholism as a Chronic Disease

#2 Understanding the Problem Drinking Continuum

#3 A Sound Investment: Identifying and Treating Alcohol Problems

#4 The Active Ingredients of Effective Treatment for Alcohol Problems

Issue Briefs

#1 Seven Tools to Lowering the Business Costs of Alcohol Problems

#2 Promote Health, Modify Alcohol Use and Save on Business Costs

#3 Alcohol Screening: A Quick First Step to Reduce Problem Drinking

#4 Brief Intervention: Cost-Effective Help for Problem Drinkers 

#5 Investments in Alcohol Treatment Can Boost Employers' Bottom Lines

#6 Employers Press Health Plans on Alcohol Screening and Treatment

In addition to these publications, Ensuring Solutions has developed a calculator that shows how alcohol-related problems generate higher (and unnecessary) health care costs and reduce workforce productivity in 10 sectors of U.S. industry. The calculator shows the following measures:

* The incidence of alcohol problems in each sector;

* The number of workdays lost due to alcohol problems;

* The reduction in workplace productivity;

* The extent of alcohol-related hospital and emergency room visits by employees and their families; and

* The costs of missed workdays, lowered productivity, and increased use of healthcare services of employees and their families.

For more information, visit the Ensuring Solutions Web site or call [phone].