Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems

Who We Are

Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Ensuring Solutions is a response to the enormous challenges Americans face in securing treatment for alcohol problems. National statistics indicate that each year alcohol, the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States, kills 85,000 Americans, ruins countless more lives and destroys families. With its devastating impact on productivity and public safety, it also drains $185 billion annually from the nation's economy. An estimated one in 13 adults has a serious problem with alcohol, but most people never get the help they need.

Launched in 2002 as an initiative of the Center for Health Services Research and Policy within the Department of Health Policy, Ensuring Solutions is built around the recognition that alcohol problems:

• can be treated effectively;
• often have a strong genetic component;
• are chronic in nature, similar to asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure;
• require early detection and continuing care; and
• cost business and communities more when left untreated.

What We Do

Working with a network of contacts among business leaders, policymakers and concerned citizens, Ensuring Solutions provides research-based information on effective alcohol treatment and the barriers to obtaining it, and engages in an array of outreach and communications efforts. In order to curb alcohol-related problems and help close the treatment gap, project faculty and staff:

• Develop resources -- including research reports, issue briefs, policy briefs, human interest spotlights, educational primers, fact sheets and Web-based calculators - to inform policymakers, employers, insurers and consumers about effective ways to curb alcohol-related problems.
• Provide research and advocacy tools to advocates working to educate people about alcohol problems.
• Offer action recommendations to policymakers, employers, insurers and concerned citizens.

Faculty

• Eric Goplerud PhD, MA
  Research Professor of Health Policy

Contact Us

Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems
2021 K St., NW, Suite 800
Center for Health Services Research and Policy
Department of Health Policy
School of Public Health and Health Services
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20006
Phone: (202) 296-6922
Fax: (202) 296-0025
Email: goplerud@gwu.edu
Web site: http://ensuringsolutions.org/

Project Director: Eric Goplerud, PhD
Project Deputy Director: Delia Olufokunbi