#0050 A systematic review of the effectiveness of employer-led interventions for drug misuse
How effective are employer-led drug misuse interventions?
Drug misuse is a serious problem in the United States. Around 20.2 million adults suffer from substance use disorder, and around 60% of them are employed. This problem significantly affects the workforce and employers, who are forced to incur a large chunk of the cost of substance use (estimated at $400 billion annually). There is a dire need for effective interventions to improve, and even save, the lives of many people and to reduce the cost of this problem for employers.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the US Department of Health and Human Services recommends five types of employer-initiated interventions to curtail this problem: written workplace drug-free policy, employee education, drug testing, employee assistance programs, and health benefit plans. Our goal was to systematically determine the effectiveness of these interventions along with the impact of supervisor training on reducing drug misuse in the workplace.
We looked at all studies published by ten popular science sources like PubMed MEDLINE, Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), Scopus (Elsevier), etc., without placing any date or language restrictions. We included randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental studies, cohort studies, pre- and post-studies, and cross-sectional studies that were published any time before May 8, 2019. A total of 27 studies (out of 21,620 initial titles) were shortlisted and assessed using the Downs and Black questionnaire. Our findings were reported per the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis.
We found that unfortunately, all of the included studies were lacking in quality. None of the studies were rated “excellent” or even “good” per the Downs and Black questionnaire; they were all rated “fair” or “poor”. The studies that looked at impact of the interventions on workplace injuries and accidents were better. However, there is a dearth of high-quality studies examining the effectiveness of employer-led interventions at reducing drug misuse.
Overall, all interventions were proven effective by at least one study. None of them were proven effective by over 50% of the studies. This suggests that only some of the interventions may actually be effective and that they are only effective in some environments. In any case, given the low-quality of studies on this topic, there is plenty of scope for employers to join hands with researchers to uncover and report on the best ways of preventing and reducing substance use at the workplace.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/1348-9585.12133
Title of the paper:
A systematic review of the effectiveness of employer-led interventions for drug misuse
Authors:
Maxwell O. Akanbi, Cassandra B. Iroz, Linda C. O'Dwyer, Adovich S. Rivera, Megan Colleen McHugh
