MOUNT VERNON — Local businesses, organizations, and public officials gathered on Monday to brainstorm program ideas and explore potential partnerships as they seek to reduce opiate misuse and deaths in Knox County.
The money for these programs will come from Ohio’s share of money that pharmaceutical companies paid to settle lawsuits relating to their role in the nationwide opioid-addiction crisis.
Ohio will receive $808 million through a OneOhio Partnership settlement with Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmeriSource Bergen; $24 million through a settlement with McKinsey & Co.; and $114 million through Walmart’s settlement.
CVS and Walgreens also announced settlements, but Ohio’s portion is not yet known.
The OneOhio Recovery Foundation will disburse the settlement money. Thirty percent goes to local governments, 55% to 19 regions throughout the state, and 15% to the State of Ohio.
Knox County is in Region 18, along with Delaware, Fairfield, Licking, Marion, Morrow, and Union counties.
Each county has a local committee that makes decisions and recommendations on behalf of all local governments in the county. The county committee forwards recommendations to the regional board; the regional board then forwards recommendations to the Recovery Foundation.
For the past 12 months, the regions have worked to set up their governance structure. That structure includes choosing a board president and a representative to the Recovery Foundation board, writing bylaws, and creating grant-making and application review panels.
Now that there is a process to receive and review applications, counties can begin to consider strategies, programs, and activities that address the abatement goals of the OneOhio partnership. Those goals include but are not limited to the following areas:
•Prevention
•Treatment
•Addressing needs of those in the criminal justice system
•Reducing stigma
•Children’s services
•Training for first responders and law enforcement
•Workforce strategies, including second-chance employment, training, and financial incentives for healthcare providers, certified addiction counselors, and other professionals
That’s where Monday’s group comes in. Substance abuse recovery counselors, law enforcement, mental health professionals, and public health officials reviewed a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of local drug programs, and then broke into subgroups to discuss solutions to drug-related issues.
As projects were identified, Knox County Committee member Julie Miller encouraged the group to “dream big.”
“It’s hard to ask for money when you don’t have an idea how much money is available,” she acknowledged.
Encouraging the group to explore partnerships, she said, “If something is working and we can continue it and improve it, that to me should be a priority.”
The Recovery Foundation determines the amounts and timing of allocations to the regions. So far, the Ohio Attorney General has only released $1 million to the foundation. That money has gone toward hiring a search firm to recruit a director and other foundation expenses.
The foundation has suggested using some regional money for state-level programs.
“We all said we want that money to come to the counties,” said Knox County Commissioner Teresa Bemiller. “One of the things for the county committee to do is to make sure as much money as possible is coming down to the counties.
“I think Knox County already does collaboration and cooperation so well, and I think that is important,” she added. “Our goal is to make sure that we advocate for Knox County.”
Bemiller is a OneOhio Knox County Committee member, along with Miller, Mount Vernon Mayor Matt Starr, Morris Township Trustee Dan Humphrey, and Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Carol Grubaugh.
The group will meet again on May 22. In the interim, Bemiller encouraged them to start drafting project applications showing estimated costs, evaluation metrics, supporting documentation, and other information.
