More than $2.8 million will be coming to the Mahoning Valley this year as part of multiyear settlements from the opioid epidemic.

The money can go toward prevention, treatment and long-term recovery; early intervention and crisis support; criminal justice services; public health awareness; workforce training fellowships and scholarships; and innovation, research and education initiatives.

Some $1.825 million will come from a 17-year settlement with opioid distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. The other $1.056 million will come from a nine-year settlement with pharmaceutical company Janssen, of Johnson and Johnson.

These are just two of eight opioid settlements that Ohio has signed. All of the settlements Ohio has signed onto follow Ohio Memorandum of Understanding guidelines.

The OneOhio Recovery Foundation Board will act as a check on Ohio’s regions to ensure that the projects picked for funding meet these guidelines. Nineteen regional boards will get a say in how funds are spent in their communities. Mahoning and Trumbull counties make up Region 7.

Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board Director Duane Piccirilli is Region 7’s representative on the state board. Piccirilli said he’s happy that the rules for how the funding can be used are flexible, but he’s also happy that experts are reviewing the funding proposals that will come in to the various areas of the state to make sure the funding awards are done properly.

“It’s $2.9 million in the area,” he said. “I think it’s good that it is not coming to the (mental health and recovery boards across the state), so there’s probably a lot more flexibility on who can apply (to provide the services) and who can be funded.”

The OneOhio Recovery Foundation Board will act as a check on the regions to ensure that the projects picked for funding meet the guidelines of the memorandum of understanding. That memorandum set up the structure of how funds will be distributed.

Of all the money that will come to Ohio, 30 percent will go to local governments, 15 percent will go to the state government and the other 55 percent will go to the OhioOhio Recovery Foundation.

GRASS-ROOTS GROUPS

“We’re going to try to provide funding to grass-roots organizations, so we’re going to try to make our (requests for proposals) as simple as possible that a lot of grass roots and support groups can write and not lose out to bigger companies that are used to writing RFPs. So we’re hoping that will create a more fair playing field,” Piccirilli said.

He said he hopes nontraditional, maybe smaller, support groups will be eligible to be funded so that “we can provide as much diversity as we can,” such as churches or law enforcement, medical, “the community of color” or “anything that meets the criteria.”

This recovery foundation will allocate its portion of funds among statewide projects, regional projects, foundation operational costs and foundation investments to make the funds grow and last longer.

The Mahoning Valley, Region 7, will always get 5.63 percent of the total funds the foundation allocates to the regions. In this round of allocations, the foundation allocated a total of $51.19 million, so Region 7’s share came out as $2.8 million.

These are the first funds to go to the regions since the settlements have been decided over the past few years.

REGION 7 OHIO BOARD

The Region 7 board, which is comprised of a total of 15 people from both counties, will now have the chance to collect applications for funds and decide how they are distributed throughout the Mahoning Valley.

April Caraway, executive director of the Trumbull County Mental Health and Recovery Board, who is also chairwoman of the Region 7 Ohio board, said she modified a grant request form she uses at the Trumbull Mental Health and Recovery Board for small grant requests.

The Region 7 board reviewed that application and process over several months, and it will be sent out “far and wide. We anticipate getting requests from first responders, treatment agencies, probably recovery houses, a whole bunch of different sectors of the community that know and are still dealing with this opiate problem that just hasn’t gone away.”

It looks like Region 7 can start making recommendations on funding to the state foundation “after October of this year,” she said.

“We will put out all of the applications, review them, score them and make recommendations to the state foundation for funding, and then we will need to assure that the money spent in the Mahoning Valley is spent appropriately.”

Now that a draft of the application is written, the Region 7 group next will have to establish the “scoring mechanism,” such as determining the weight of each section of the application. As of right now, the regions are going to be able to release the applications in October.

She said a factor that will be considered is whether the organization has a “sustainability plan,” meaning a plan to be able to continue to provide the service after this funding runs out.

She said keys that come across in the plan for using the funds are ideas that are “new and different.”

“What is happening, what holes can we fill that maybe will have more lasting, long-term positive impact than what we are already doing?” she said.

Caraway said she and Piccirilli know what Trumbull and Mahoning counties already are doing, so that they can tell the 15 members of the Region 7 group what agencies already get funding — and whether the proposals are “new and different.”

Caraway said the Region 7 group will not know what types of “new and different” approaches will be proposed or funded until after applications come in.

HOW FUNDING WORKS

Piccirilli said the Mahoning County Mental Health and Recovery Board can fund only certified agencies, but through the Ohio One funds, noncertified agencies can be funded. That is because the funds are coming directly from the nonprofit One Ohio board.

Piccirilli said it will be Region 7’s job to rank the proposals and forward them to the statewide group to be checked out and funded as long as the project meets the laws and regulations for using the funds.

“As a group, we will send down the grant requests to the state to meet our dollar amounts.” Some may not get sent down. We are going to prioritize and rank and send down the ones.”

The funding goes directly to the organization that will provide the services.

“I’m just one member of the committee that is made up of family members (of overdose victims), consumers and experts. And we are all going to have the same voice at the table,” Piccirilli said. “That’s what’s really good.”

The Region 7 board has been meeting since October and has been working to set funding priorities and develop a grant process. However, it has been waiting on some guidance from state policies, which were adopted in April.

Kathryn Whittington, interim direction of the foundation and Ashtabula County commissioner, said at the May 10 foundation board meeting that the board hopes to announce the grant cycle for region grants in September.

This would mean those receiving the grants would not likely see the funds to actually implement programs until at least March 2024, although that could get pushed back.

One board member suggested giving applicants 60 days to apply for funds, rather than the 30 that was built into the timeline. If the board ultimately decides to accept this change or others, that would delay when funds will be disbursed.

The regional boards will not transfer funds. Instead, the foundation board will say how much is available to the region, and it will actually distribute once it approves the projects the region boards have chosen.

The foundation and its board were created in May 2022 and have spent the past year developing policies and procedures, so that when funds were ready to be allocated, the process of deciding which projects get money could begin.