R.I. to receive $2.1 million to fight opioid addiction

Rhode Island will receive $2.1 million in federal funds to to help stem opioid addiction under a nationwide grant announced Friday by Rhode Island’s congressional delegation in Washington.

The funding is part of $485 million in grants authorized by Congress last year under the 21st Century Cures Act and signed into law by former President Obama.

Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, said in a statement that "this vital funding is going to help ensure that tools and resources that are critical to fighting the drug overdose epidemic -- such as naloxone, (an opioid antidote), prevention education, and medication-assisted treatment -- get to where they are needed most in Rhode Island.”

The funding is the first of two rounds provided for Act, which allocated $1 billion in grant funding for states to prevent and treat addiction.

U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed and Congressmen Jim Langevin and David Cicilline announced the $2,167,000 in federal funding for Rhode Island’s Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH).

The federal funding is designed to increase access to treatment and expand addiction prevention efforts to reduce the number of accidental drug overdose deaths.

The number of people who died of accidental drug overdoses in 2016 rose nearly 16 percent, to 336 deaths, compared with 290 deaths in 2015, according to state health data.

“At a time when addiction and overdose rates continue to rise, systems are being pushed beyond capacity,’’ Linda Hurley, president and chief executive officer of CODAC, Inc., a major provider of medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction in Rhode Island, said in a statement. “This new funding will allow Rhode Island providers to expand and enhance prevention, treatment and recovery supports to individuals, families and communities across the state that are struggling to combat this epidemic.”

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