Last Thursday, we held a community meeting focused on how the County should spend the $39M it will receive by 2039 in opioid settlement funds.
We heard from leaders and practitioners at:
- Empire Recovery
- Hill Country Clinic
- A parent who lost a child to an opioid overdose
- Rancheria
- Shasta Community Health Center
- Shasta County Office of Education
- Shasta Substance Use Coalition
We didn’t answer the question, nor was that the goal, but I did walk away with some key themes that are important to those who attended:
- Develop a data-informed strategic plan: We ran into a lot of these types of questions: How much need is there for that service? What does it cost us to provide that service? Who is already doing that? It’s important to answer these questions before deciding how to spend millions of dollars. Every strategic plan starts with a goal – and I believe that’s where we should start as well. Then identify all the programs and services needed to achieve that goal, compare that landscape analysis to what exists, identify the gaps, and estimate the costs to fill the gaps.
- Ensure accountability and oversight: There was a lot of interest in making sure this money is spent on the opioid problem and spent in ways that make a real difference. There was also interest in having a diverse group of people involved in oversight, including members from the community.
- Mix prevention and treatment: While we know we need to treat those who already struggle with an opioid addiction, it’s also important to keep the next generation from abusing these substances. It likely makes sense to allocate a certain percentage of the funds to prevention and a certain percentage to treatment. What that breakdown should be is still to be determined for me.
- Engage the groups already working together on this issue: There is an active group of organizations in the trenches every day working to address these challenges. Many of them commented last week that they work together and have thought about how to address this problem for a while. We would be smart to involve them in the planning and ongoing refinement process – while being upfront that participation doesn’t mean they’ll get any of these funds.
You can watch the meeting here. (Heads up – the audio may not be great the whole time.)
I’m narrowing in on a specific recommendation for a first round of funding, which I hope to share at the October 29th Board Meeting, but if you have ideas, experiences, or questions on this topic, I’d love to hear from you.
Feel free to reach out to me directly to share your thoughts, take the survey, and/or meet me next Thursday (10/24) at From the Hearth on Market St. in the back room at 4pm to discuss this topic.