The Baltimore City Council and Mayor’s Office have their work cut out for them in keeping an eye on more than half a billion dollars in opioid restitution funds the city won from drug distributors and manufacturers.
In the coming year, the city will allocate about $36 million in those funds to organizations in hopes of reducing overdoses, increasing harm intervention and educating the public.
That’s not to mention the $87 million that is already earmarked from the settlements to go to 22 nonprofits for the same reasons.
It’s a lot of money to keep track of, and the city foresaw it would need a robust oversight structure to handle it; one that the city started planning for in the summer of 2024.
Now, the checks are starting to go out and the real work begins. In a Wednesday hearing of the Baltimore City Council’s Public Health and Environment Committee, city officials said they had a handful of measures in place to keep grants on track.
Sarah Whaley, the executive director of the office of overdose response, said the team adopted standard performance measures for all grants developed by Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, in conjunction with Vital Strategies, a public health organization, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The measures are linked to the five approved uses for the funds: prevention, treatment, recovery, harm reduction and social determinants of health.
Under those plans, grantees will be subject to monthly performance reviews and status reports, site visits, document reviews, performance meetings and corrective actions as needed.
The office is also using oversight mechanisms before issuing grant funds.
“We, in some cases, have spent a long time with grantees negotiating, what is your scope of services? What is your staffing model? Do you need some technical assistance in order to deliver services according to best practice and evidence-based practice,in some cases, we have chosen to issue only a portion of the grant agreement because of readiness to implement and readiness to stand up the program,” said Baltimore Recovery Office Director Elizabeth Tatum.
Phylicia Porter, chairwoman of the Public Health and Environment Committee, said she felt the city was prepared for how it would spend the funds.
“It's just constant communication, constant communication and making sure that we align on a vision and a strategy,” Porter said. “What I am more concentrated about is making sure that we are not duplicating efforts between said services. For example, if we have a few entities that are providing housing for a particular area, making sure that we don't provide funding to an organization to provide the same housing in that area.”
Baltimore’s plan for reducing overdoses and getting at the systemic issues of opioid use is complex and multifaceted, touching on everything from access to care to education to housing.
Porter said the large scope is needed.
“I definitely don't feel that it's too much, because in order for us to handle this complex issue, we have to have that holistic view,” Porter said.
Baltimore will be issuing $2 million in community grants to smaller organizations through the fund in February.
