Oregon Attorney General Rosenblum today announced $600,000 in grants to combat Oregon’s opioid epidemic. The funding for the grants comes from Oregon DOJ’s recent $2.4 million Medtronic settlement, and will be awarded to Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) Department of Family Medicine and Oregon Health Authority (OHA) to support their work helping Oregonians struggling with opioid addiction. This is the second time that Oregon DOJ has used settlement funds to fund opioid addiction services.
The grants are funded with a portion of a $2.4 million settlement with Medtronic Sofamor Danek, Inc which resolved allegations that the company unlawfully promoted the Infuse Bone Graft Device. The settlement provided that the Attorney General may grant money from the settlement for programs addressing appropriate pain treatment.
“We take an even greater satisfaction in resolving consumer cases like Medtronic when we are able to provide portions of the settlement to help with the underlying problems the case addresses. Here we are able to do that with two exceptional grantees that will be able to expand their work addressing pain management and opioid addiction,” said Attorney General Rosenblum. “In order to fight Oregon’s opioid crisis, we must find innovative ways to fund pain management research and support our local communities that are on the front lines of this health crisis.”
OHA
OHA will receive a $260,000 grant to expand its Prescription Drug Overdose Prevention and Clinical Prescribing Guidelines Implementation Project. The project will increase the number of health systems in Oregon that implement best practices in pain management and safe opioid prescribing as recommended by the CDC. The project will be able to double its capacity by establishing a second Pain Management Improvement Team to work with five health systems in the mid-Willamette Valley.
OHSU
OHSU will receive a $360,000 grant to expand the outreach and educational components of Project Nurture, a Health Share supported program with several sites in the Portland Metro area that was created to address the needs of pregnant women with substance use disorders. Project Nurture integrates substance use disorder treatment with primary care (including pain management), prenatal care, intrapartum care, postpartum care and well-baby care that women with substance use disorders need while pregnant and in the first year of the child’s life. The OHSU Project Nurture team has led efforts at health care transformation by making the approach used to care for babies with opioid withdrawal be more effective and patient centered with less intervention by re-writing OHSU’s inpatient neonatal opioid withdrawal protocol. With the grant, the OHSU’s Project Nurture will further develop educational programs for physicians in training and regional outreach and educational activities for the medical community in Oregon.