Jessica Cejnar Andrews / Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023 @ 3:50 p.m.
As Opioid Settlement Dollars Trickle Into Del Norte, Leaders Need to Figure Out How To Use Them
Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting
Previously
• Del Norte Signs On To National Opioid Settlement Against Manufacturers, CVS, Walgreens and Walmart
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With opioid settlement agreement dollars trickling into Del Norte County, Assistant County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts urged supervisors to form a working group to figure out how to spend that money.
Roberts said the local team taking part in a national effort to battle the crisis in rural communities could get involved. Yurok Tribal members working on substance abuse issues in their communities also pledged their involvement, particularly toward the expansion of a wellness court program for all Del Norte citizens.
“I love hearing Del Norte County owning up to what the problem is so we can address it,” said Anthony Trombetti, an employee in the Yurok Tribe’s health and human services department who works with Del Norte County to combat substance abuse among tribal parents and families. “The problem could be addressed and resolved if we take the risk and join up together and bring forth a new model of how to respond to the opioid (crisis).”
Roberts gave the Board of Supervisors a breakdown of Del Norte County’s place in the National Opioids Settlement on Tuesday after they heard from Shiann Hogan, Behavioral Health program manager and a member of the local Reaching Rural Initiative team.
So far, Del Norte has received about $366,218 in opioid settlement dollars. This funding is from a July 2021 agreement involving opioid distributors McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergen and manufacturer Janssen Pharmaceuticals and accounts for the first three years of payments, Roberts told supervisors.
Del Norte is expected to get about $1.4 million from the McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergen settlement through July 2038 and a total of about $271,097 from Janssen through June 2031, Roberts said.
More opioid settlement dollars will also be filtered to Del Norte from other litigation, including a case involving the manufacturers Teva and Allergan as well as the retailers Walgreens, CVS and Walmart, Roberts said. That payout could last from six to 15 years, she said, depending on the defendant.
“It’s money we can plan out for and know we’re going to be getting over a substantial period of time,” Roberts said. “The first payments will be coming at the end of this year (or) the beginning of next year. Right now what’s happening is they’re calculating how much everybody’s going to get.”
Del Norte County has five years to determine how they will spend those settlement dollars, Roberts said. High priority uses include addressing the needs of people of color as well as the homeless who disproportionately live with substance use disorder.
They can also be used to help those with addiction find treatment options in lieu of winding up in the criminal justice system. Interventions to prevent drug addiction in youth are also a high priority use for settlement dollars, Roberts said.
Roberts’ presentation came days after the telemedicine company Ophelia placed Del Norte County as No. 6 on a list of California counties that dispenses the most opioids in the state.
Citing the California Department of Public Health’s Opioid Surveillance Dashboard, Roberts noted that in 2022, Del Norte came in second at the highest number of opioid-related overdose deaths in California per capita. Though she noted that the county with the highest per capita death rate, Alpine, is also the state’s most sparsely populated.
“When you really look at taking that outlier out, we’re really No. 1 in the state,” Roberts said.
Citing the state's Opioid Surveillance Dashboard, Assistant County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts said opioid-related deaths in Del Norte County have been occurring increasingly in the younger population. | Screenshot
Del Norte County’s opioid-related overdose death rate in 2022 was 125.5 per 100,000 people. Lake County came in third with a per capita overdose death rate of 76.3 per 100,000 people.
“Probably the most shocking number for me is the fact that Del Norte County was No. 1 in the state for opioid-related deaths for children under 5 years of age in 2022. That’s scary and that’s sad,” she said. “And thus far, the raw data for 2023 (shows) we’ve already had at least 16 deaths related to opioid overdosing.”
Hogan cited these same statistics during her presentation on what she and other members of the Reaching Rural Initiative team learned since being selected to participate late last year.
Del Norte is one of eight counties nationwide participating in the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s initiative to curb opioid abuse in rural communities.
The local team especially wants to break the generational cycle of opioid abuse, Hogan said, again citing the statistic concerning opioid deaths in Del Norte's youngest population.
In fleshing out potential options, including inpatient and outpatient medicated assisted treatment programs, detox centers, wellness, family and drug courts, the local team realized that transportation is one of the primary barriers for Del Norters living with opioid addiction.
As a result, Hogan said, the team has focused its efforts on establishing a mobile medicated assisted treatment program. Hogan said the local Reaching Rural team is collaborating with Aegis Treatment Centers, which operates in Humboldt County, on setting up a mobile MAT program.
District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey, who is also a member of the local Reaching Rural team, said a mobile program would be beneficial because of the barriers for those needing access to Methadone or Suboxone.
“You have to go to Humboldt County, and that’s daily you have to go to Humboldt County,” Starkey said. “You’re taking all this time to travel down there and get the medication. By having that here locally, we’re hoping to reach more people so that more people will be on these inhibitors and various treatments so they can stop using opioids.”
Once a mobile medicated assisted treatment program in Del Norte County gets started, opioid settlement dollars could be used to keep it sustainable, Starkey told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Wednesday. She said she and the Reaching Rural team are meeting Saturday to develop a program budget for the mobile MAT.
“If it’s close to what we need for a mobile crisis unit, it’s probably about $200,000 to get the vehicle and outfit it,” Starkey said, referring to a Behavioral Health Branch effort to expand immediate mental health help for those experiencing a crisis, while helping them avoid the hospital emergency room. “We haven’t firmed up how we want to staff it. (But) once the initial buy is done, then we can use the opioid moneys to keep it sustainable.”
Another potential use for those settlement dollars is expanding the joint wellness court created several years ago through collaboration between the Yurok Tribe and Del Norte County, Roberts said.
Having worked with the program for about five years, Roberts said it was successful, but that she’d like to see it geared toward everyone.
It was this program that Trombetti and his colleague with the Yurok Tribe, Lori Nesbitt, referred to.
Trombetti described the program as a “court forum” where parents meet with attorneys and providers.
According to Nesbitt, Del Norte County’s public defenders, wellness course case managers, tribal and county social workers also participate in the wellness court. One aspect that’s missing, Nesbitt said, is mental health. But, she said, she could see the program “growing to all members of Del Norte County.”
“It takes a village to raise a child. We’re not quite together with the village yet,” she said. “In order for us to reach the children of this county we need to bring a stronger group of people (together) that know what’s going on.”
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