Skip to sections below

Share this intervention

PrintEmail

Summary

Abstinence-Contingent Wage Supplements for Alcohol Use was designed to promote alcohol abstinence and employment among adults experiencing homelessness and alcohol use disorder by providing financial incentives dependent on verified abstinence.

Abstinence-Contingent Wage Supplements for Alcohol Use was designed to promote alcohol abstinence and employment among adults experiencing homelessness and alcohol use disorder by providing financial incentives dependent on verified abstinence. During the six-month program period, unemployed participants could earn up to 20 hours per week of wages for engaging in job-seeking activities with an employment specialist, at $10 per hour. Employed participants could receive wage supplements for verified hours worked, capped at $8 per hour for up to 40 hours per week. These payments were contingent upon maintaining alcohol abstinence, which was verified through wearable transdermal alcohol concentration (TAC) biosensor monitoring devices. 

Any alcohol use detected by the TAC device resulted in a temporary reset of the base supplement rate to $1 per hour. The rate increased by $1 per day for each day the participant remained abstinent and worked for at least five minutes until the maximum amount of $8 per hour was achieved.   

The pilot program was implemented in Baltimore, MD. 

101084-Study of Abstinence-
Populations and employment barriers: At least a high school diploma or equivalent, Unemployed, Homelessness, Substance use disorder

Studies of this intervention

Study quality rating Study counts per rating
Low Low 1
Back to top

Implementation details

Organizations implementing intervention

The program was implemented by Johns Hopkins Center for Learning and Health.

The information contained here reflects how the intervention was implemented at the time of the evaluation.

Local context

The study was conducted in Baltimore, MD.

Characteristics of research participants
Black or African American
36%
White
61%
Another race
1%
American Indian or Alaska Native
1%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
1%
Hispanic or Latino of any race
3%

The race and ethnicity categories may sum to more than 100 percent if the authors reported race and ethnicity separately; in these cases, we report the category White, rather than White, not Hispanic.

State(s) where implemented

AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE DC FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY Canada

The Pathways Clearinghouse refers to interventions by the names used in study reports or manuscripts. Some intervention names may use language that is not consistent with our style guide, preferences, or the terminology we use to describe populations.