The latest round of opioid settlement funds — $18 million — has made its way to Bernalillo County. Payments total $22.6 million so far. The funds come from historic settlements between states and companies like Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons and others due to their alleged involvement in the opioid epidemic.

According to the New Mexico Department of Health, the state has one of the highest opioid overdose rates in the country — 11th highest in 2020. The DOH said two of three drug overdose deaths in New Mexico in 2020 involved an opioid, whether prescription, heroin or fentanyl; and in 2020, the state’s fentanyl-involved death rate was seven times the rate in 2016.

Bernalillo County has spent $407,000 so far from a $4.6 million funding round last year — $383,000 on marketing campaigns and $24,000 on a buprenorphine program. Buprenorphine, also known as Suboxone, is used in medication-assisted treatment to help people reduce or quit opioid use. 

However, Kathy Korte, the county’s chief of government affairs, said spending has since halted. 

The board of County Commissioners and the Albuquerque City Council both passed resolutions late last year stating that settlement funds shouldn’t be spent until a city-county strategic plan was in place. Korte said the city of Albuquerque has received about $25 million in settlement money so far.

County officials disclosed late last week that they are in the process of finalizing a contract with global health organization Vital Strategies — through a Bloomberg overdose prevention initiative grant — to produce such a plan. Vital Strategies previously worked with the county on its fentanyl awareness campaign.

“Their proposal would be derived from a landscape analysis of the efforts at the city and the county — a strategic look at how we utilize this funding,” Korte said. “Where are there gaps, and where should we focus our collective efforts?”

Korte said her colleague at the city is Gilbert Ramírez, the director of Health, Housing & Homelessness and the two are tasked with ensuring that the city-county resolutions are administered. 

Ramírez wasn’t immediately available for comment on the potential Vital Strategies contract.

Timeline, frustrations

Korte said the hope is that the Vital Strategies contract will be approved by Bernalillo County Commissioners and the Albuquerque City Council sometime in March, which would allow work to begin in April. She said Vital Strategies would then have until November to present a plan. If the plan is approved, the county and city would implement the plan in 2025 and 2026.

Meanwhile, members of the county’s addiction treatment advisory board (ATAB) — while supportive of the city-county resolutions — have expressed concern that plans aren’t moving fast enough, and that the county’s communication has been lacking at times. The board was created by commissioners and consists of medical professionals and addiction specialists who make addiction treatment and harm reduction policy recommendations for county programs.

“Can you communicate to the commissioners the sense of urgency about a need to have a coherent plan that is implemented? Because it seems like this has been going on for quite awhile,” said board member and clinical psychologist Barbara McCrady to Pam Acosta at a Feb. 19 ATAB meeting. 

Acosta is a Behavioral Health Initiative senior program manager at the county.

Board member Dr. Anjali Taneja, a family physician and executive director of the nonprofit Casa de Salud New Mexico, agreed with McCrady.

“The strategic planning process has been delayed for more than a year,” she said. “That delay means that opioid settlement funds don’t have a framework to follow or strategy to follow. There’s a tension with the fact that there’s a lot of money and an awful lot of need.”

Taneja added that ATAB members had previously requested that commissioners be more involved with the board. 

“It feels that sometimes items from this board don’t get to the commissioners,” she said. 

According to Korte, the process does take time, but officials want to make sure, for example, that the funds aren’t being used on duplicative city-county services. 

“The wheels of government turn a little bit slower maybe than in the private sector,” she said. “We are completely following the resolutions to do exactly what the County Commission and City Council has tasked us with doing.”

Korte said officials also want to ensure that any funded programs and initiatives have staying power.

“You don’t want to just spend, spend, spend, and then the money’s gone and what do you have to show for it?” she said. “I can completely respect that our elected officials want to make sure that whatever we are spending this money on, it is making an impact and it has a means of being sustainable. Whatever we do has to be sustained when the money is gone.”