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Opioid settlement bucks will soon reach more NYC groups serving drug users
By
Caroline Lewis
Published Jan 28, 2025
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Scott Heins for WNYC/Gothamist
By
Caroline Lewis
Published Jan 28, 2025
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A broader array of community groups serving drug users in New York City will soon be able to take advantage of the millions of dollars the city has received through legal settlements with opioid manufacturers, city officials said Tuesday at a Council hearing on how the funds are being distributed.
That includes the 14 syringe service programs across the five boroughs that offer harm reduction services, said Rebecca Linn-Walton, an assistant commissioner with the city's health department. These programs typically offer clean needles and test strips, along with access to the addiction treatment medication buprenorphine, daily meals and a range of other services.
Linn-Walton said requests will go out soon to solicit proposals for the funding from these and other community groups.
So far, the city has received $154 million from opioid settlements, and projects that will grow to $500 million by 2040. New York state could also receive an additional $250 million from a settlement secured last week with Purdue Pharma and members of the Sackler family, which owns the OxyContin manufacturer.
Some of those funds would likely flow down to New York City.
OnPoint NYC has been the sole syringe service program operator to receive opioid settlement dollars from the city so far. The organization’s locations in Harlem and Washington Heights operate overdose prevention centers where clients can use risky illicit drugs under staff supervision.
But the city’s dollars don’t fund those specific services, which are on shaky legal ground under federal law; rather the money has gone toward supporting their other “wraparound” services and helping them extend their hours, Linn-Walton said.
The city has also committed to distributing $3 million annually among eight different hospitals and community-based organizations on Staten Island, where there are no public hospitals.
Still, as the city ramps up to its goal of dispensing $50 million in opioid settlement dollars each year to combat addiction and overdose, nearly half of the money will continue to go toward maintaining and expanding programs that seek to connect drug users to treatment as they pass through public hospital emergency rooms and inpatient units across the city, according to a previous breakdown shared by Linn-Walton.
The city is using some of the money to expand training for hospital staff on how to communicate with and treat drug users who might be going through withdrawal, with the goal of making a “hot hand-off” to follow-up care, said Dr. Dan Schatz, director of programs and policy at NYC Health and Hospitals’ Office of Behavioral Health.
The city’s Office of the Medical Examiner is also ramping up funding for a program that connects the families of people who die of overdose deaths to services, and seeking to drastically reduce the time it takes to turnaround toxicology reports, Robert Van Pelt, the agency’s chief of staff, said at the hearing.
The family members who receive calls from the medical examiner's office are “often taken aback that the government is calling them asking how they’re doing,” said Hannah Johnson, who runs the outreach program, which is staffed by social workers.
She said the biggest issues people are dealing with are usually financial, since they are dealing with the expenses of a funeral as well as the loss of income, which can also affect housing and other necessities.
When asked how the city is measuring the success of its growing number of opioid-settlement-funded programs, city officials said they are monitoring both the number of people who receive direct services, as well as trends in overdoses and deaths in the communities where the programs operate, to determine whether people are falling through the cracks.
Linn-Walton acknowledged in her testimony that, while overdose deaths in the city slightly decreased in 2023, some communities have seen little progress.
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new york city
Health and Science
Caroline Lewis
Caroline Lewis is on the health care beat for WNYC and Gothamist. She has covered COVID, a nurses' strike, the overdose crisis and New York’s marijuana legalization effort, and spent a year investigating patients' medical bills. She always wants to hear about how everyday New Yorkers experience the health system. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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