The posttreatment costs for alcoholics were 24 percent lower than comparable costs for untreated aloholics. Another issue is that certain health care reform policies might narrow treatment options for individual patients. Results of this study may help determine the effect of individualized patient-treatment matching on treatment effectiveness and cost, thereby potentially influencing health policy development. Existing Policies Research may provide data for evaluating public health policies after they are enacted. Because research and public health policy continually influence each other, such findings may have implications for future policy and program development.
Research regarding the effectiveness of warning labels is inconclusive.
Some alcohol-related behavior, as opposed to attitudes about drinking, may have changed coincident with the introduction of the warning labels. Among women of childbearing age, the proportion who reported limiting their drinking because of concern about health problems rose from 18 percent in 1989 to 25 percent in 1990 and 28 percent in 1991. Uniform minimum legal drinking age. Research examined the effects of increases in the MLDA within individual States before the MLDA was raised to 21 in all States. These and other research results were cited in support of passage of the Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act in 1984, which encouraged all States to raise the MLDA to 21.