PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island will receive $11.4 million in federal funds over the next three years to help prevent and treat opioid addiction.

State congressional leaders announced Thursday that Rhode Island has received more than $11 million in federal opioid treatment grants administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The three-year grant will enable people to access substance use disorder services and help reduce prescription drug/opioid overdoses. In addition, some of the money will go to increasing the availability of prevention and treatment resources and collecting data on addiction treatment and recovery.

Accidental overdose deaths in Rhode Island are declining, reaching a record high of 436 in 2022. Last year, the state reported 404 opioid-related accidental overdose deaths. So far this year, 164 overdose deaths have been reported.

“Too many families have lost loved ones to overdoses, and opioid addiction has ruined too many lives. This federal funding will strengthen the state’s coordinated response to addiction, reduce overdoses and enable more Rhode Islanders to recover. This will enable people in need to better access services including prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery,” US Senator Jack Reed said in a statement.

Reed is a senior member of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee and helped ensure $1.575 billion in state opioid response grants in 2024, as well as $2 billion in block grants for substance use prevention services substances, treatment and recovery, according to Reed. to be announced.

Health advisory after overdose surge in Woonsocket

News of the funding comes after the Rhode Island Department of Health issued a public health advisory this week regarding a spike in overdoses in Woonsocket.

Over the past six months, the city’s nonfatal overdose rate has been more than twice the statewide rate. The Department of Health reported that 376 nonfatal opioid overdoses were reported per 100,000 residents in Woonsocket, compared to a statewide rate of 185 per 100,000 residents.

Fentanyl is fueling the crisis

Since 2018, Rhode Island has received more than $63.2 million in state Opioid Response grants to combat the opioid crisis through treatment, prevention and other recovery services.

In previous years, some of the money was allocated to improving data collection and tracking to better monitor the effectiveness of various initiatives. The state has created a public dashboard that can be found at PreventOverdoseRI.org.

More: Addressing an Urgent Issue: 20 RI Nonprofits to Receive $1.3 Million to Help Fight Opioid Crisis

“The opioid crisis has taken a painful toll on families of all walks of life, in every corner of our state. We must ensure that treatment, prevention and recovery services reach Rhode Islanders who need them,” said U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

Whitehouse authored the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, the federal law governing the nation’s response to the opioid epidemic. “These federal funds will help ensure that support is available to anyone seeking the long, noble road to recovery.”

The crisis has been exacerbated by the ubiquity of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has been linked to multiple overdose deaths in Rhode Island and across the country. Last year, 79% of overdoses in the Ocean State involved fentanyl, according to RIDOH.

Accidental overdose deaths in Rhode Island dropped 7.3% in 2023 for the first time in four years, according to the Governor’s Overdose Task Force. The decline in overdoses in the state was more than twice the national average, with a 3% decline in accidental overdose deaths in America during this period.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is crediting Rhode Island with taking steps to improve the distribution of naloxone, a nasal spray that prevents opioid overdoses and is commonly known as Narcan.

“Based on a community needs assessment, the State of Rhode Island has increased the availability of naloxone kits and launched a new central online ordering system to better coordinate the distribution and tracking process. This multi-agency effort improved the procurement and distribution of naloxone across the state,” the CDC said.

A first-of-its-kind overdose prevention center is now operational

The infusion of federal money will complement Rhode Island’s work to combat the crisis with the more than $300 million the state will recover over time from a settlement resulting from a lawsuit against manufacturers and distributors of prescription opioid painkillers. The state has sued the companies in an attempt to hold them accountable for harm, including a skyrocketing number of accidental overdose deaths and opioid prescription rates that exceed the national average.

One of the initiatives that will receive funding will be the creation of the nation’s first state-sanctioned overdose prevention center at 45 Willard Ave., near the Rhode Island Hospital campus in Providence. The Weber/RENEW and VICTA projects are joining forces to create a space where people can use illicit drugs safely and under supervision, with the goal of getting people into treatment and staff on site to prevent possible overdoses.

VICTA will have doctors, nurses and counselors on site to provide access to services as soon as a person is ready for treatment.

According to Project Weber/RENEW, the center is scheduled to open in December.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI addiction treatment services will receive an $11 million boost from the feds