The Alcohol Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services of Montgomery County will receive more than $4 million from the State Opioid and Stimulus Response funding.
This is the fourth round of grants awarded from the fund.
A total of $100 million was awarded in federal grants statewide to fight opioid use and prevent overdose deaths in Ohio.
ADAMHS is grateful to be a have received the largest award in the state of Ohio, said Jennifer Hochdoerfer-Chiles, ADAMHS senior program coordinator.
“It is a testament to show that all of the work that we have done over the past four years of SOS fundings is showing progress in Montgomery County and is showing a reduction in our overdose deaths,” she said.
Grants from the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration are offered to organizations that provide prevention, harm reduction, treatment and long-term recovery services for Ohioans struggling with an opioid or stimulant use disorder.
"These funds help provide those necessary services for individuals. They help increase engagement to treatment services," Hochdoerfer-Chiles said.
According to Hochdoerfer-Chiles, this recent round of money will be channeled to providing services to pregnant and postpartum people and children.
“They wanted to identify what the priorities of the state would be," she said. "And these were regional stakeholder meetings for professionals, people with lived experience, community members to say these are the priorities that we see as needs in our community.”
Ohio saw a 9% decline in overdose deaths in 2023, compared to the national 2% decrease.
These numbers reflect the partnerships that funding has fostered in Ohio, according to Gov.Mike DeWine.
“We are empowering our local partners to advance their work to protect communities and families from the devastating consequences of opioids and other substances," DeWine said in a public statement. "Ohio’s overdose death rate has started to decrease significantly in recent years, and our goal is to use these grants to continue this encouraging progress.”
While these numbers are encouraging, Hochdoerfer-Chiles said a lot of work remains to be done in Ohio.
"This was a one-year guarantee of funding. Beyond that, we do not know that there will be any additional funds," she said. "And so part of that was for us to create sustainability plans for all of the programs because we do not want these services to be discontinued in our community absent state and federal dollars."
