Washtenaw County (Ann Arbor) — Economic Impact

Scope note. The AI & digital-health interventions below are illustrative "low-hanging fruit" — a small, high-feasibility sample chosen to demonstrate planning-grade ROI. They are not exhaustive or prescriptive, and every figure is a planning estimate, not a guaranteed return.

Economic burden by condition — Human-Capital method

Annual productivity loss = DALYs × $62,000 Michigan GDP per capita

Condition	DALYs/yr	HC burden/yr	Share
Cancer	17,305	$1.07B	27.3%
CVD (heart disease)	15,286	$948M	24.1%
Substance use	12,140	$753M	19.2%
Mental health	7,647	$474M	12.1%
COPD	4,544	$282M	7.2%
Stroke	4,331	$268M	6.8%
Diabetes	2,126	$132M	3.4%
Total	63,379	$3.93B	100%

Each averted DALY ≈ $62,000 of recovered productivity — the arithmetic basis for grant, employer, and health-system partnerships. VSL burden ($17.2B) is the willingness-to-pay standard used in federal cost-benefit analysis (HHS/EPA/DOT) and captures mortality only.

Illustrative intervention ROI

Planning-grade "low-hanging fruit" for an Ann Arbor-profile county (cancer-led, high student mental-health load)

Cancer early-detection outreach

100–300 DALYs/yr

Targeted screening reminders (AI-triaged) for the highest-burden cancers. At $62K/DALY, recovering even 200 DALYs ≈ $12.4M/yr of productivity vs modest program cost.

Campus & young-adult mental-health triage

$474M pool

Mental health is 12% of burden with a large student denominator. Digital screening + stepped-care routing addresses YLD directly.

Overdose prevention (naloxone + MOUD)

$753M pool

133 substance-use deaths/yr. Even a 10% reduction in SUD YLL is worth several $M/yr in averted productivity loss.

Turn this burden profile into a funded plan

Lakes Linked builds county-specific, grant-ready burden analyses and intervention ROI models.

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