About the Authors

Olivia Silber Ashley, Dr.P.H., a public health researcher at RTI International (a trade name of Research Triangle Institute), has 15 years of professional experience in prevention and etiology research, program management, and direct services related to a variety of issues, including substance abuse, parenting, and family influences on behavior. She is currently editing a monograph on women in substance abuse treatment for the Office of Applied Studies (OAS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), and she has published peer-reviewed research on this topic. Prior to joining RTI, she worked as a program manager for the North Carolina Division of Maternal and Child Health, as a child protective services social worker, and as a substance abuse counselor.

Thomas M. Brady, Ph.D., is with SAMHSA's OAS. Dr. Brady's research interests include women's health, co-occurring mental disorders, and substance abuse treatment utilization. He completed his doctoral training at the University of Illinois, School of Public Health, in Chicago where his research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and the University of Illinois, Department of Psychiatry. He also has received degrees from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Jeremy Bray, Ph.D., is a health economist at RTI. His research focuses on two primary areas of interest: the economics of substance use and mental disorders, and the cost-effectiveness of substance abuse treatment and prevention. In his work on the economics of substance use and mental disorders, he has examined the labor market effects of substance use, abuse, and dependence. Currently, his research focuses on the impact of alcohol use and abuse on educational attainment. In his research on the cost-effectiveness of substance abuse treatment and prevention, he has estimated the costs and effectiveness of enhanced employee assistance program (EAP) services designed to increase employee utilization of the EAP. In addition, he serves as the cross-site economic analysis task leader on the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention's Workplace Managed Care initiative and on the Robert Wood Johnson's Cutting BackTM project to determine the cost-effectiveness of screening and brief intervention for risky drinking. At RTI, he directs SAMHSA's "Medicare, Medicaid, and Managed Care Analysis" project that is examining the prevalence and costs of publicly funded mental health services and substance abuse treatment, and he leads the analysis of SAMHSA's "Integrated Database" project through a subcontract with The MEDSTAT Group. His research findings have been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Health Economics, Labour Economics, Public Health Reports, Health Economics, and Employee Assistance Quarterly.

Carol L. Council, M.S.P.H., is a senior research associate at RTI. Prior to assuming her position at RTI, she was director of research and planning for substance abuse treatment to the State of North Carolina. Earlier, she worked as a research associate in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health as well as their Highway Safety Research Center. She has 30 years' experience in designing and conducting research and evaluation on a variety of subjects, including community mental disorder studies, community hypertension and diabetes studies, evaluations of the effectiveness of family nurse practitioners, highway safety studies with particular emphasis on drinking and driving research, and the development of performance outcomes measures for publicly funded substance abuse treatment programs. Ms. Council was codirector of North Carolina's Practice and Research Consortium, which focuses on enhancing the collaboration between policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. She served as Secretary of the International Council on Alcohol Drugs and Traffic Safety. She has directed grants and contracts funded by a variety of sources, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention.

Laura J. Dunlap, M.A., a research economist at RTI, has participated in several studies involving the estimation of the costs of drug treatment programs. She has evaluated the effect of the treatment process on the costs of providing treatment services and the effect of treatment services on economic outcomes. Recently, she has been involved in estimating the costs and cost-effectiveness of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) health interventions aimed at low-income, drug-using women. Her primary research interests include studying factors that affect the demand for substance abuse treatment and influence treatment-seeking decisions, examining program and client characteristics that affect the costs and cost-effectiveness of treatment programs, and health service delivery for special populations.

Sarah Q. Duffy, Ph.D., is with the SAMHSA's OAS, where she conducts economic and health services research. Prior to SAMHSA, she held research positions at the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission and the Agency for Health Research and Quality, and she taught health economics at Eastern Michigan University. She has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in economics from Smith College. She has published in economics and health services research.

Moshe Feder, D.Sc., is a senior research statistician at RTI. His interests include survey sampling, time series analysis of cross-sectional survey data, longitudinal analysis of panel survey data, and other data analyses. He holds a doctorate in mathematics from the Israel Institute of Technology and a master's degree in statistics from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Prior to coming to RTI in 2000, he worked on statistics research projects and taught statistics and statistical computing at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom, and at Statistics Canada.

Lev S. Sverdlov, M.D., Ph.D., Doct. of Med. Sci., is a senior health researcher for Synectics for Management Decisions, Inc. In this capacity, he is involved in substance abuse research for the National Analytical Center sponsored by SAMHSA's OAS. Prior to joining Synectics in 2001, he held a number of academic and research positions and also worked as an independent contractor with government agencies, including SAMHSA, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and Travis Air Force Base in California. He has conducted and managed a number of research projects and managed clinical and training programs. He has developed a curriculum for training special education teachers in child and adolescent mental health; participated in the development of a curriculum for training primary care providers in substance abuse treatment and prevention sponsored by SAMHSA; and designed, developed, and implemented research-based cost-effective prevention/disease management programs for a military managed care organization. Prior to coming to the United States in 1991 as a distinguished visiting professor at Florida International University, he was a director of the Department of Outpatient Psychiatry and Prevention of Mental Disorders of the Bekhterev Research Psychoneurological Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia. He authored over 100 books, chapters, and articles on a broad spectrum of issues related to substance use and mental disorders, including clinical and outcomes research, clinical psychopharmacotherapy, clinical psychology, anthropology, epidemiology, health economics, and research methodology.

Albert Woodward, Ph.D., is with SAMHSA's OAS, where he works on health economic and financing analysis. He served on the President's Task Force on Health Care Reform. Prior to his Federal service, he worked for several organizations in the health care area, including the Appalachian Regional Commission, Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Coopers & Lybrand, and Arthur Young. He has a Ph.D. in economics (with distinction in mathematical economics) from American University, an M.B.A. from the Wharton School, and a B.A. from Haverford College. He has published on access to health care, health insurance, and the economics and financing of substance use and mental disorders.

Gary A. Zarkin, Ph.D., is director of RTI's Center for Interdisciplinary Substance Abuse Research and the Behavioral Health Economics Program. He has led or participated in several projects involving the economic analysis of drug treatment, prevention, and studies of workplace substance abuse. He has published several papers on cost, cost-effectiveness, and the benefit-cost of substance abuse interventions. He recently led the development of a new method to estimate the cost of services for methadone treatment. He was previously an assistant professor of economics at Duke University and a research associate professor in Duke University's Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences. He has published extensively in economic, substance abuse, and health service journals, including the American Journal of Public Health, Evaluation and Program Planning, Health Services Research, Inquiry, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, and Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment.