The first simulation of the cost-effectiveness of supplying naloxone kits to heroin users to enable them to prevent overdose deaths estimates that in the US context these programmes would be well within the range considered a cost-effective health intervention. Findings are likely to broadly apply to the UK, one weak link being whether drug users given the kits actually carry them around.

Key points from summary and commentary
• The first simulation of the cost-effectiveness of supplying naloxone kits to heroin users to enable them to prevent overdose deaths has endorsed them as a cost-effective health intervention.
• Though constructed for a US context, the results are so robust under widely varying assumptions that the study’s implications are likely to apply broadly to the UK.
• However, in the UK one study has found that very few users given naloxone kits carry them around, reducing the programme’s potential to save lives.

Article: Cost-effectiveness of distributing naloxone to heroin users for lay overdose reversal, Coffin PO, Sullivan SD, Annals of Internal Medicine: 2013, 158, p. 1–9.