Working to Close the Treatment Gap

Alcohol problems ruin lives. They destroy families, reduce productivity and threaten safety. Problem drinking is the third leading cause of preventable death in the United States, killing 85,000 Americans annually. It also drains $185 billion from the nation’s economy every year.

Yet more than a quarter of a million Americans who seek help for an alcohol problem can’t get it.

At Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Problems, we’re working with business leaders, policy makers, and concerned citizens to close this treatment gap. As part of The George Washington University Medical Center, Ensuring Solutions knows that misuse of alcohol, a legal drug, is a major public health issue. Through its outreach and communications efforts, Ensuring Solutions emphasizes 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

• cost business and communities more when left untreated.

Making the Evidence Known

Ensuring Solutions provides research-based information on effective alcohol treatment and the barriers many people face when they seek help for a drinking problem. By publishing a variety of publicly available resources, by working with major corporations, government agencies and leading organizations like the National Business Coalition on Health, and by drawing on the actual experiences of employers and ordinary people, Ensuring Solutions shows how successful efforts to increase access to alcohol treatment have improved the lives of many individuals and their families, increased productivity in the workplace and made our communities safer.