Follow the Money: How to Track Opioid Settlement Dollars in Your State
Yesterday, we hosted the second in our series of fireside chats aimed at helping journalists cover the billions of dollars in opioid settlement monies coming in our communities right now.
Kate Boulton of Vital Strategies and Christine Minhee of OpioidSettlementTracker.com and Yale Law School’s Solomon Center shared with us how to use the state-by-state guides to cover this critically important topic where you live. And beyond just where to find and how to use their guides, they also shared story ideas that you can take on today.
We’re also including a list below of all of the links discussed in the session and a few more that will help you cover this topic and other addiction-related topics.
If you’re not a journalist, please consider sharing these resources with the journalists at your local newspaper, TV or radio station, or at your favorite digital outlet. Journalists will help us hold public officials accountable for the spending of these funds, and you can help them cover this essential topic! Forward this email to them today!
We have plans already in the works for more of these fireside chats in the coming months so keep an eye out in your inbox, but in the meantime, thank you for the vital work you’re doing in your newsroom or on the ground in your community!
Helpful Links
Access all of Reporting on Addiction’s resources to help you cover the opioid lawsuit money, including the link to join our Slack community and newsletters: https://www.reportingonaddiction.org/ostrh
Opioid Settlement Funds: State-Level Guides for Community Advocates - Vital Strategies
The Opioid Settlement Tracker can help you see total settlement amounts reached by state governments from each of the defendants in the opioid litigation, how states are planning to spend those monies, and how much of that money must be publicly reported: https://www.opioidsettlementtracker.com/
Stories that used these guides from the Boston Globe, WHYY and The Public’s Radio.
Tribal communities settled many of these lawsuits separately. Track opioid settlement funds being distributed to tribal communities: https://www.tribalopioidsettlements.com/
For more national resources and data on opioids and overdose deaths, visit the CDC’s Understanding the Opioid Overdose Epidemic: https://www.cdc.gov/opioids/basics/epidemic.html
Substantive strategy/interventions: NACo Opioid Solutions Center: https://www.naco.org/resources/opioid-solutions-center
Johns Hopkins University: Various resources, including Principles and implementation-focused tools: https://opioidprinciples.jhsph.edu/
Evidence-Based Strategies for Abatement of Harms from the Opioid Epidemic: https://www.lac.org/resource/evidence-based-strategies-for-abatement-of-harms-from-the-o
From the War on Drugs to Harm Reduction: Imagining a Just Overdose Crisis Response: https://fxb.harvard.edu/warondrugstoharmreduction
Sign up for Reporting on Addiciton’s newsletter here to learn about future chats like this one and receive a recording of today’s event: https://www.reportingonaddiction.org/newsletter