Opioid settlement funds-resulting from multiple lawsuits by U.S. state and local governments against opioid manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and other companies-are now flowing to state and local governments. The aim is to mitigate the persisting opioid crisis through spending the funds on appropriate abatement strategies. However, as governments are set to receive billions of dollars over the next decade and beyond there is already major variance appearing in which strategies communities are investing their funds into.
In early 2023, Acadia Healthcare and CBOH joined forces to develop a resource aimed at aiding decision-makers, healthcare providers, and the public in gaining a deeper understanding of the settlement funds. By the latter half of 2023, as the project’s research needs expanded, collaboration with communities across North Carolina became essential to assess the progress in utilizing settlement funds. This led to a partnership with NCGrowth. From January to March 2024, CBOH and NCGrowth, supported by Acadia Healthcare funding, organized four community sessions across North Carolina to explore the challenges and best practices associated with fund allocation.
In addition to the initial work from CBOH, NCGrowth, and Acadia Healthcare, the lessons learned from communities highlighted the need for a larger variety of resources and tools, from ‘How to write a grant‘ to request settlement funds from one’s local government, to ‘How to develop a settlement decision-making council‘, to the need for large health datasets on opioid use. After speaking with close to 100 policymakers, governments officials, doctors, nurses, peer support specialists, law enforcement, and concerned citizens, the scope of this website expanded. In addition to our insights gained from engaging and learning from communities, as well as our own research and developed tools, we recognized the importance of curating the best available resources and data from organizations sharing our commitment to informing the public about opioid settlement funds and the current crisis. On this website, you’ll find a combination of our original work alongside carefully selected resources that we consider high-quality and reliable.
As payments from the National Opioid Settlement and other opioid-related lawsuits are distributed to local governments across the country, the question many communities are asking is, ‘How should we spend the funds?’ While the opioid settlements include a list of possible uses for the funds (often denoted as core strategies or high-impact opioid abatement strategies), local governments and states have major leeway in choosing which strategies to implement.
Read the press release about the partnership between CBOH and Acadia Healthcare for this project.
Bringing together expertise from the UNC community to generate knowledge, prepare business leaders, and to catalyze important collaborations around the business of health.
Funding for this project was provided by Acadia Healthcare.