After nearly a year-long funding pause on opioid crisis abatement funding, the Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission (POSDC) announces applications are open for its third grant cycle.
The cycle includes $13 million for organizations working to address Delaware’s opioid crisis and will be distributed in micro, mini and general grants.
These three grant categories are new to the process following fraud concerns raised with previous grant recipient Code Purple, a Dover-based nonprofit.
While that investigation is ongoing, POSDC Co-Chair Joanna Champney says the commission spent the past several months developing new procedures and guardrails to prevent similar situations.
“It's been a lot more systematized — the reporting has been tightened up somewhat, and we think that it really allows the state to crosswalk our most significant needs to the selection of proposals that align most closely with those needs," Champney said. “The process for scoring the applications and then presenting a funding portfolio that is very strategic, presenting that to the commission, and then ultimately to the Behavioral Health Consortium for approval and voting, I think is really important too.”
Micro-grants will be awarded to smaller, quick-turnaround projects with grants up to $10,000. Mini-grants are for more structured projects and larger organizations with funding between $10,000 and $30,000. General grants are the largest category of $30,000 or more, geared toward well-established organizations to support bigger, longer-term programs.
Applications opened on April 21 and the POSDC will be hosting three informational webinars for interest applicants on April 28, May 5 and May 12 before applications close on Monday, May 19. More information can be found here.
The commission hopes to announce grant winners by this summer and still has over $50 million worth of settlement funds yet to be allocated.
Champney says their focus is currently on grant cycle three, but the commission fully intends to run more grant cycles to make sure the settlement funds reach the community.
"We definitely recognize the urgency of the addiction epidemic in this state and recognize that this funding is very flexible, and it's a great opportunity to plug the holes that exist in the system that other funding sources can't cover because of grant rules," Champney said. "So we're very eager to roll it out responsibly and timely."
"We at the Department of Justice have been fighting tooth and nail, often punching above our weight, to hold Big Pharma accountable for the devastation they have caused in Delaware. And we have had some big wins, bringing back millions of precious dollars to fund treatment and abatement of the opioid crisis in our state," said Delaware Attorney General and POSDC Co-Chair Kathy Jennings in a statement. "We are seeing some real progress with a staggering reduction in the epidemic's death toll over the last year thanks to the many fantastic people and organizations, the Commission included, dedicated to this vital work. Yet, there is still so much to be done. Now is the time to dig in and double down, and I trust that this round of grant funding will give us that edge to keep pushing forward."
According to Delaware's Prescription Opioid Settlement Tracker, as of February 20, the state has been awarded just over $74 million is settlement funds and has completed distribution of just over $12.5 million.
This figure does not include the recently awarded $27 million from a nationwide settlement between various states and Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family over their role in exacerbating the opioid crisis.
