The immeasurable cost addiction has on our economy

In the fifth episode of the Portage Health Foundation Addiction Series, we dive into the impact addiction has on our community with the foundation’s executive director Kevin Store. Store’s passion for community and vision on seeing what’s needed to improve the community have made a huge difference for decades, and will only be more evident in the future through the Portage Health Foundation.

You can watch the video above, or listen to the audio version below:

Highlights from Episode 5

Kevin Store, Executive Director of PHF

• “How do you measure the cost of addiction on a broken family, broken marriage, broken home, how do you put the value to the loss of a life that was lost to an overdose?”
• “There are studies that show almost an 11-to-1 return on investment for every dollar that you put into prevention and treatment.”
• “The challenge that I would put out to those are watching this video , what is the cost of not addressing this issue?”
• “Really start looking at, even though you might not have it in your bottom line, this is costing you money. It’s costing our taxpayers money. It’s costing our businesses money. It’s costing our community money. But most importantly it’s costing our community and our children their future.”

Looking Ahead

In the next episode, we’ll talk about the cycle of addiction, and how it can make good people do bad things.

More About PHF’s Addiction Series

Visit phfgive.org/addiction to see a list of all episodes, find resources on addiction in our community and to subscribe to receive an email when the next episode drops. Be sure to subscribe to the Portage Health Foundation’s YouTube channel to never miss a video episode or find PHF Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts to catch the audio version of this podcast. 

How to Get Help

If you or someone you know is suffering from addiction, know that there are resources available in our community. Dial Help is a great place to start as they have a crisis line available 24 hours a day, seven days a week based here in the Copper Country. You can call 906-482-HELP, text 906-35NEEDS or chat live at dialhelp.org.