SALISBURY — The Rowan County Board of Commissioners heard an update on the Health Department’s usage of the opioid settlement funding for the past fiscal year during the meeting on Monday.

Highlights of the update included the results of a community survey conducted in late 2024, progress made on the goals set for the previous year as well as the fact that Rowan County had dropped out of the top 10 counties for deaths related to fentanyl-laced substances in North Carolina.

“We are very proud of this work. This is very hard work. Rowan County suffers tremendously from the opioid epidemic and we are doing what we can. It is not something that is going to happen immediately, but we know that any slowing of our overdose deaths is a move in the right direction,” said Public Health Director Alyssa Harris.

The update is required to be conducted every year by the N.C. and U.S. departments of justice. The counties receiving settlement funding are also required to lay out specific budgets for the year with goals and then provide updates at the end of the year addressing how that funding was utilized to make progress or complete health goals.

“The reports go through the NCDOJ with the (memorandum of agreement) that we signed. It goes to them, also to UNC Chapel Hill and the N.C. (Technical Assistance Center). So they’ll all take a look at it and review it, make sure that all the numbers add up, make sure that we spent the money in the right places and they will review an expense that I signed. They will take a fine-toothed comb over these funds,” said Harris, adding later in the meeting that there was a “lot of oversight.”

As part of the strictly-structured process, counties are allowed to go through preset strategies and pick which ones to spend funding on. For the past year Rowan County committed $68,591 to collaborative strategic planning, $88,889 to recovery support services, $123,239 to naloxone distribution, $159,029 to post-overdose response team development and $83,330 to harm-reduction services. Added up, $523,087 was budgeted, with only $397,144 of that being spent.

Most of those savings came in the post-overdose response team strategy, where Harris said they only ended up spending $92,069. Harris also said that the county was able to leverage the available settlement funding into further grant funding, including a $70,000 grant from Vital Strategies, a $50,000 grant from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services and a $106,447 grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

One of the main achievements from that funding that Harris pointed to was a dedicated, ride-along peer-support specialist. That person is able to ride with paramedics to overdose calls and directly connect with individuals after their overdoses are reversed, whereas before paramedics had to refer those individuals to the specialist, who would then follow up with a phone call.

As part of the update, Harris also showed statistics that the department is required to show to the state and federal DOJ’s measuring the progress in addressing the opioid epidemic. Stats included that over 20,000 clean syringes have been distributed, approximately 250 naloxone kits were distributed, the response team received over 1,300 referrals after an overdose reversal and approximately 1,700 people were trained in harm reduction and naloxone usage.

Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 of 2024, Rowan County had 40 people who were dead on arrival of paramedics from opioid overdoses.

As part of the update, Substance Use and Mental Health Program Manager Hayley Edwards also provided the results of a community survey that was held in October, 2024, that asked community members questions such as what barriers prevent individuals from accessing services and what services or supports are needed for long-term recovery from opioid use disorder. Edwards said that the county’s future plans would be influenced by the answers, which ranged from the cost of treatment and transportation posing barriers to community recovery centers and support groups being needed services.

Edwards and Harris provided the strategies and goals for the upcoming year, which included prioritizing early intervention, providing addiction treatment for incarcerated persons and providing evidence-based addiction treatment. To meet those strategies, the Health Department plans to:

• provide mental health first aid training to employee and volunteer first responders, youth-serving organizations, foster families and more.
• implement a harm reduction and anti-stigma social media campaign to educate the community on the principles of harm reduction and substance use prevention.
• facilitate community resiliency model workshops with community members.
• implement medication-assisted treatment for inmates in the Rowan County Detention Center.
• give a harm reduction kit to those arrested on substance use-related charges.
• establish a process for clients to access outpatient medication-assisted treatment after being released from the detention center’s program and the EMS bridge program.