Wasco County overdose prevention grants awarded

Recipients of the funds are the regional jail, YouthThink, Dufur School District, the Gorge Recovery Center and The Next Door, Inc.

The various projects funded cover four categories: prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery. Those are the allowable funding areas for the settlement dollars.

Stemming from the national overdose epidemic, multi-state litigation against opioid manufacturers, distributors and retailers resulted in more than $50 billion in settlements to states. Oregon retains 45% of the settlement dollars for state use and must distribute the additional 55% to cities and counties that signed up to receive settlement dollars. A minimum population base was required for counties and cities.

A similar amount of money is expected to come to the city and county over the next 10 years or so, Jones said.

Nationally, overdose deaths fell 3% in 2023 compared to 2022 — down from 111,029 to 107,543 — but were up 27% in Oregon, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Oregon saw 1,416 overdose deaths in 2023, compared to 956 in 2022, according to the Oregon Health Authority.

Wasco County and the City of The Dalles asked the overdose task force to oversee the grant process. The city and county also approved an Intergovernmental Funding Agreement, which allowed the funds to be combined in order to make the most of the opportunity. The task force announced the grant opportunity last summer, and all five applicants received funding, Jones said. The funds will start being paid out in January.

The projects are:

Northern Oregon Regional Corrections (NORCOR) regional jail: $179,000 to help inmates get sober and reintegrate into society. People who are incarcerated have high rates of substance abuse disorder and are much more likely to overdose once they leave jail.

The grant money will pay for helping inmates with housing assistance, vocational training, employment readiness and mental health support. It will also offer peer support and mentorship to facilitate social reintegration.

YouthThink: $57,550 to create an educated and aware adult population, with a goal of reducing youth substance use. YouthThink will collaborate with national nonprofit “Partnership to End Addiction” to train at least 30 adults in prevention curriculum, and offer 12 monthly community trainings.

Gorge Recovery Center: This new organization is working to open a location in The Dalles where people in recovery can safely hang out amongst like-minded people also in recovery. It will receive $87,486 to help pay for an on-site peer support specialist. Earlier this year the program received a $2 million state grant to establish its recovery center.

Dufur School District: $21,280 to upgrade its health curriculum and buy equipment to present the curriculum. The curriculum aims to equip students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to make healthy choices and lead substance-free lives.

$101,963 to support LGBTQ+ youth in the community to feel safe and welcome and to prevent substance use. The funding will include a needs assessment to understand substance use and misuse in the LGBTQ+ community while increasing knowledge about the risks of substance use, misuse and overdose. It will also fund naloxone trainings. National data shows LGBTQ+ high school students are almost twice as likely to use illicit drugs as students who identify as heterosexual.

Because several entities that were planning to seek grants were also on the local overdose task force, Jones said a decision was made to have outside subject matter experts rank the applications.

“We outsourced the grant reviews so that there would be no conflicts of interest. We wanted to make sure that the process was fully transparent. We also utilized data from a recent gap analysis in the preparation of the request for proposals to ensure that projects fell within the needs of our population,” Jones said.