The ROI of Early Intervention

Every dollar invested in substance use prevention returns an estimated $10 to $18 in avoided treatment and criminal justice costs. Yet for many public health entities, running a prevention program at scale can mean stretched staff, manual screening processes, and funding that’s finally available but hard to operationalize. Join CHESS Health CEO Hans Morefield for a look at the current challenges facing public sector prevention programs, the funding available to address them (opioid settlement, SAMHSA, Rural Health Transformation), and how a turnkey digital platform, complete with the screening tools, automated workflows, and a full marketing and outreach toolkit, closes the gap without adding headcount. 

CHESS Health is solely focused on substance use disorder, supporting the full continuum of care from prevention through treatment and recovery with evidence-based digital tools. Hans will walk through how counties, states, and school systems are building a measurable prevention infrastructure across primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention, and share a real-world case study of automated prevention deployed at scale, along with the outcomes it produced. 

Who Should Attend 

• County and state behavioral health and public health leaders
• Opioid settlement fund administrators and prevention grant managers 
• School district health and wellness coordinators 
• Drug-Free Communities and prevention coalition staff 
• FQHC and community health center prevention program leads 
• State rural health office and Medicaid policy staff exploring infrastructure funding 

Learning Objectives 

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to: 

• Compare automation approaches across the prevention continuum, primary, secondary, and tertiary, and where each delivers the most impact for limited staff time.  
• Align opioid settlement, SAMHSA, SOR/SUBG, and Rural Health Transformation funding to specific technology investments, based on each program’s current approved-use guidelines.  
• Review the implementation timeline, promotional approach, and measurable outcomes from a real-world case study of automated prevention deployed at community scale.  
• Compare anonymous self-directed and interview-style screening workflows and their tradeoffs for reach, staff time, and data quality.  
• Understand how a digital tool’s reporting capabilities support meaningful engagement tracking and closed-loop referral, and how that data satisfies funding and reporting requirements.