Giving Compass' Take:

• In an episode of the podcast Return on Investment, ImpactAlpha discusses what impact investors can do about the opioid addiction crisis in America, specifically when it comes to family-centered treatment.

• Support for public housing and preventative systems for youth could be part of the solution, but mainly it will require collaborative efforts across many sectors.

• Here's how we can take action in the private sector to address this issue.

If impact investors are worth their salt, they’ll soon — if not soon enough — come up with a whole raft of investible solutions to the crushing burden of opioid addiction.

The problem may have snuck up over the past decade, but there’s no escaping the costs of the crisis now. As many as 23 million addicts in the U.S. More than 64,000 overdose deaths, most of them opioid-related. The annual economic cost: an estimated $193 billion.

The epidemic will land at investors’ feet soon enough, Imogen Rose-Smith, an investment fellow at the University of California, said in the most recent episode of ImpactAlpha’s Returns on Investment podcast. Providers of so-called ESG ratings, which provide signals of environmental, social and governance performance, are grappling with what investors in the capital markets are doing to perpetuate or profit from the addiction crisis. Drug and other companies may take hits for their eventual liabilities.

“Investors are going to start feeling that,” Imogen says in the podcast.

What would “opioid lens” investing look like? Experts are converging around a public-health approach, and impact investors should look there for a pipeline of interventions. Brookings Institute’s Dayna Boyen Matthewsums up the directions for action:

  • Medicaid reimbursements for supportive housing programs with employment, education, and health services.
  • Two-generation, family-centered treatment and support for children in foster care.
  • Preventive systems for younger children to promote healthy behaviors and pro-social involvement.

Listen to the podcast about how impact investors can stop the opioid epidemic at ImpactAlpha.