ObjectivesIn the midst of the opioid overdose crisis, local jurisdictions face a choice of public health interventions. A significant barrier when considering evidence-based practices (EBPs) is the lack of information regarding their implementation cost. This protocol paper provides the methodological foundation for the economic cost evaluations of community-wide strategies on the scale of a national study. It can serve as a resource for other communities, local policymakers, and stakeholders as they consider implementing possible public health strategies in their unique settings.MethodsWe present a protocol that details (1) the process of identifying, reviewing, and analyzing individual strategies for study-funded and non-study-funded costs; (2) prospective costing tool designation, and; (3) data collection. To do this, we set up working groups with community stakeholders, reviewed financial invoices, and surveyed individuals with detailed knowledge of their community implementation.DiscussionThere were 3 main challenges/limitations. The first was the lack of a standard structure for documenting nonfunded costs associated with each strategy. The second was the need for timely implementation of cost data. The third was generalizability because our study designed its strategies for selected communities due to their high opioid overdose mortality rates. Future steps include more tailored questions to ask during the categorization/filter process and establishing realistic expectations for organizations regarding documenting.ConclusionsData collected will provide a critical methodological foundation for costing large community-based EBP strategies and provide clarity for stakeholders on the cost of implementing EBP strategies to reduce opioid overdose deaths.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE:Mobile substance use treatment units are effective approaches to increase treatment access and reduce barriers to opioid use disorder (OUD) care. However, little is known about the economic costs of maintaining and operating these units. This study aimed to estimate the economic costs of starting and maintaining mobile units providing harm reduction, overdose education and naloxone distribution (OEND), and medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD). METHODS:As part of the HEALing Communities Study, four communities in Massachusetts (Bourne/Sandwich, Brockton, Gloucester, Salem) implemented mobile units offering OEND and MOUD (buprenorphine and naltrexone only); each selected different services tailored to their community. All provided MOUD linkage via telehealth, but only one offered in-person MOUD prescribing on the unit. We retrospectively collected detailed resource utilization data from invoices to estimate the direct economic costs from August 2020 through June 2022. Cost components were categorized into start-up and operating costs. We calculated total economic cost over the study period and the average monthly operating cost. RESULTS:Implementing a mobile unit offering OEND and MOUD required a one-time median start-up cost of $59,762 (range: $52,062-$113,671), with 80 % of those costs attributed to the vehicle purchase. The median monthly operating cost was $14,464. The largest cost category for all mobile units was personnel costs. The monthly ongoing costs varied by community settings and services: approximately $5000 for two urban communities offering OEND and MOUD linkage via telehealth (Gloucester, Salem), $28,000 for a rural community (Bourne/Sandwich), and $23,000 for an urban community also providing in-person MOUD prescribing on the unit (Brockton). CONCLUSION:The economic costs of mobile substance use treatment and harm reduction units are substantial but vary by community settings and services offered. Our results provide valuable community-level economic data to stakeholders and policymakers considering establishing and/or expanding mobile units with OEND and MOUD services. Further exploration of cost-effectiveness and efficiency should be considered across different settings.

BACKGROUND:Communities That HEAL (CTH) is a novel, data-driven community-engaged intervention designed to reduce opioid overdose deaths by increasing community engagement, adoption of an integrated set of evidence-based practices, and delivering a communications campaign across healthcare, behavioral-health, criminal-legal, and other community-based settings. The implementation of such a complex initiative requires up-front investments of time and other expenditures (i.e., start-up costs). Despite the importance of these start-up costs in investment decisions to stakeholders, they are typically excluded from cost-effectiveness analyses. The objective of this study is to report a detailed analysis of CTH start-up costs pre-intervention implementation and to describe the relevance of these data for stakeholders to determine implementation feasibility. METHODS:This study is guided by the community perspective, reflecting the investments that a real-world community would need to incur to implement the CTH intervention. We adopted an activity-based costing approach, in which resources related to hiring, training, purchasing, and community dashboard creation were identified through macro- and micro-costing techniques from 34 communities with high rates of fatal opioid overdoses, across four states-Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio. Resources were identified and assigned a unit cost using administrative and semi-structured-interview data. All cost estimates were reported in 2019 dollars. RESULTS:State-level average and median start-up cost (representing 8-10 communities per state) were $268,657 and $175,683, respectively. Hiring and training represented 40%, equipment and infrastructure costs represented 24%, and dashboard creation represented 36% of the total average start-up cost. Comparatively, hiring and training represented 49%, purchasing costs represented 18%, and dashboard creation represented 34% of the total median start-up cost. CONCLUSION:We identified three distinct CTH hiring models that affected start-up costs: hospital-academic (Massachusetts), university-academic (Kentucky and Ohio), and community-leveraged (New York). Hiring, training, and purchasing start-up costs were lowest in New York due to existing local infrastructure. Community-based implementation similar to the New York model may have lower start-up costs due to leveraging of existing infrastructure, relationships, and support from local health departments.