Arnie Aldridge

Arnie Aldridge is a research economist at RTI with 18 years of experience in behavioral health economics. Dr. Aldridge has extensive experience evaluating treatments, programs, and policies designed to improve individual and public health around risky substance use, addiction, and co-occurring mental health disorders. He has conducted efficacy, comparative effectiveness, cost, cost-effectiveness, simulation, and epidemiologic studies. Dr. Aldridge’s studies have analyzed pharmacotherapies and other treatments for alcohol and opioid use disorders, long term recovery patterns, community interventions to reduce overdose deaths, screening and brief intervention programs for risky substance use, and crisis intervention and jail diversion program. He also has experience evaluating community-based recovery support initiatives, including employment services, vocational rehabilitation, and supportive housing.

As the task lead of health economics, cost, and cost-effectiveness for the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) HEALing Communities Study, he coordinates data collection, study designs, and analysis across the four state outcomes and economics teams. Dr. Aldridge currently acts as the Project Director for an evaluation of a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) funded screening and brief intervention project.

He also serves as the principal investigator for the Improving Models of Alcohol Consumption Mismeasurement and Burden of Disease study, funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). This study has a goal of improving estimation accuracy of alcohol-attributable fractions in epidemiology and burden of illness studies in the United States using Bayesian mismeasurement models.