Chaired by Attorney General Gentner Drummond, the Opioid Abatement Board is responsible for doling out settlement funds Oklahoma has received from lawsuits against drug distributors, manufacturers and retailers. Eventually, the board will distribute around $1 billion.
At the board's latest meeting, it announced the latest set of grant funds, which will be distributed to 14 counties, two cities and two school districts across the state.
Comanche and Osage counties received the largest grant awards at $300,000 each. Comanche County plans to fund an opioid task force, provide housing for individuals recovering from opioid addiction and provide transportation for drug court participants. Osage County will partner with the Osage Nation Health System to offer treatment, prevention and counseling support services to residents.
These grants were awarded to applicants who submitted corrected applications following the first round of grant awards in June, when $11 million was awarded to 71 Oklahoma political subdivisions. Any entity that initially submitted an incomplete application or requested funds for an unapproved purpose was invited to resubmit their grant applications.
Three applicants were denied this round – Hughes County, McCurtain County and the City of Guymon. Board members said the applications were incomplete, or submitters were not willing to conform to approved grant uses.
Now, the board is looking for an outside firm to monitor the efficacy of the latest round of funds and previous grants.
Terry Simonson is the Special Counsel for Drummond, who oversees the board. He says measuring outcomes, including lower rates of opioid overdose and opioid overdose death, is an important part of the process.
“We need them now,” Simonson said. “If the money goes out, they need to be out there with the people spending the money to make sure what you're spending on, what's the data show?”
He said the board has been preparing its search proposal for six months and hopes to confirm a partner in January or February.
The partnering organization will be responsible for tracking performance and analyzing data in places where the money is being used. Simonson said many other states have used methods like online dashboards to report trends.
Kelly Dunn, who works at an addiction recovery clinic for Oklahoma State University, is also a member of the Opioid Abatement Board. She said it took a while to finalize the official request for a partner released this week because sorting through grant applications took precedence.
“One of the priority efforts was to get some of this money out,” Dunn said. “It had been sitting here for a while, and people are suffering, and so it didn't feel right to just keep sitting on it.”
She is part of the team tasked with creating application guidelines, which she said had to be designed from scratch.
“Ater the application process got built and applications got sent, then it became the natural next thing to make sure we have a good way to track everything and track long term outcomes,” Dunn said.
Oklahoma is one of many states that received large amounts of opioid settlement funds.
According to the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, 300 people died from fentanyl overdoses in 2022 — that’s more than six times the deaths recorded in 2019. In rural communities, people with opioid addictions experience increased barriers to treatment and mental health services.
