By Sierra Pfeifer, KOSU
The Oklahoma Opioid Abatement Board is preparing to give out a new round of grants to statewide applicants. Soon, local governments will be able to take a bid at $29 milliondesignated to address the opioid crisis.
Applications for a chunk of the money will open May 12 and run through June 11. All Oklahoma counties, municipalities, public school districts, technology school districts and public trusts are eligible to apply.
Housed in the Attorney General’s Office, the Opioid Abatement Board (OAB) is one of the state’s mechanisms for addressing the opioid crisis that has plagued Oklahoma over the last decade.
Funds won from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors are appropriated to the board by the state Legislature. The board is then responsible for choosing how to distribute the money from the Opioid Abatement Revolving Fund.
Board members Dr. Atul Walia, Dr. Kelly Dunn and Carol Bush have volunteered to be part of the subcommittee that will review the next round of applications.
So far, the OAB has awarded over $12 million in grants throughout the state.
The money the board has already distributed is divided among 85 different grantees. Grants ranged from almost $20,000 to $700,000, with the largest sum awarded to a joint application from the City of Tulsa and Tulsa Public Schools. The second largest grant of $600,000 went to Tulsa County.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Ue32C/6/Of the 85 political subdivisions awarded money, 15 were granted funds only after making edits to their initial proposals. The board reported it received more than 100 grant applications in total, despite more than 250 groups initially expressing interest.
Each grant proposal looked different, but had to address one of the board’s approved uses, including treatment and recovery programs, opioid abuse education, naloxone training and distribution and mental health care.
Terry Simonson, special counsel to the Attorney General, said around 1,400 political subdivisions are eligible to apply for grants. Still, many don’t have dedicated grant writers or available staff to put together a proposal for the money.
He said these barriers have deterred some potential applicants.
“Probably the most common reason,” Simonson said, “was, ‘I don’t know what we need, so how do I know what to ask for?’”
Simonson said the board is updating its website for the next grant cycle, adding answers to commonly received questions and resources about how to complete a needs assessment.
Still, he said he’s proud of the impact initial community investments have already made.
“Six months ago, there wasn’t anyone sitting here who said, ‘I’ve been hired to work in the opioid space for my county,’ and now you’ve got several of them,” Simonson said during the most recent OAB meeting. “That’s where we got to go. I need some generals on the ground.”
During the first round of grants, the legislature appropriated $23 million to the OAB, of which the board awarded $12 million.
Dr. Kelly Dunn, who helped decide which projects to spend the money on, said she hopes the board will be able to give out more this go-around.
“We’d love to give all $29 million out if there’s appropriate projects applied for,” Dunn said.
She said the board will now accept proposals that extend over three years. Previously, only one-year projects (that could be spent over two years) qualified for grant money.
Depending on its population size, each applicant will also be able to apply for three times as much money as before.
A bill expanding the authority of the board and its decision-making capacity cleared its first legislative hurdle earlier this month.
Requested by the Attorney General’s Office, Senate Bill 574 expands uses for grant money and adds colleges and universities to the list of eligible applicants. The bill passed with a 39-7 vote in the Senate and can now be considered by the House of Representatives.
If adopted, the board can establish new criteria to determine how grants are disbursed – an expansion from previous considerations, which included metrics like the number of opioid-related deaths in a given area.
The bill would also allow the board more flexibility in spending. It opens up funds to approved uses authorized by opioid-related settlement agreements involving the state and earmarks 10% of funds for statewide projects.
“The genesis of this bill is lessons learned from when we deployed the first time,” AG Gentner Drummond said. “We had $20 million and we didn’t get it all deployed; how can we make it more effective, more efficient for us and give staff the opportunity to touch more lives?”
This article was originally published by KOSU.
