Claire Fiddian-Green is the President and CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Opioid addiction is taking an undeniable toll on Hoosiers struggling with addiction, their families, and Indiana employers and communities. In an ideal world, we could keep people from becoming addicted to prescription pain medicine or using heroin in the first place through comprehensive prevention programming for youth, parents, teachers and employers. There is much more we could and should be doing when it comes to prevention in Indianapolis and across the state. But as we focus on scaling up prevention efforts, we also must ensure those who are suffering from opioid use disorder get connected with the […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Public policies like higher cigarette taxes and expanded access to evidence-based cessation treatment can help lower smoking rates in Indianapolis and across the state. But employers looking to help their employees quit and improve their health today have a number of tools already available, beyond these longer-term policy efforts. Take the experience of two Fortune 500 companies who used incentives to help employees quit. In 2004, General Electric launched a program that offered employees up to $750 if they quit smoking for 12 months. To test the impact, GE randomly offered the incentive to some […]