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Minot receives grant as weapon in opioid battle

Minot will receive a $180,000 state grant to strengthen its efforts to treat opioid use disorders and improve community education.

First District Health Unit in Minot and entities in Bismarck, Fargo, Grand Forks and Valley City were awarded funding from the 2017 State Targeted Response to the Opioid Crisis Grant through the North Dakota Department of Human Services.

Lisa Clute, executive director at the health unit, said the grant will provide funding for initiatives developed by the Minot Mayor’s Committee on Addiction. The committee began meeting last month.

“It will allow us resources to address some of these issues. Hopefully, reduce some barriers we might come up with in developing our plans,” Clute said.

Eighty percent of the grant money must go to treatment initiatives. Clute said the community will be looking to integrate existing care programs and help families with advocacy services.

Twenty percent of the money will go to community education, which the Committee on Addiction has identified as a major need in Minot. Education includes providing information so families recognize when to get help and know where to go to get it.

Clute said the grant is flexible in allowing communities to develop plans that work for them.

“It’s really looking at your own community and seeing where the barriers are, and we are still finding out some of those barriers. They are still being identified,” she said. The grant will provide resources to empower the community to respond to barriers and remove them, she said.

According to the Department of Human Services, grant recipients are tasked with increasing access to evidence-based treatment and recovery support services. Communities also will reduce overdose-related deaths through prevention efforts, specifically dissemination of the life-saving drug naloxone.

Overdose deaths in North Dakota increased from 20 deaths in 2013 to 61 deaths in 2015. Opioids include the illegal drug heroin, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and pain relievers available legally by prescription.

Grant-funded efforts are expected to begin this month and run through April 15, 2018.

The grants come from $2 million awarded to North Dakota last April from the federal Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. The funding was authorized by the 21st Century Cures Act.

The state intends to use some of the money to offer other types of support to additional North Dakota communities struggling to address opioid abuse and overdoses.

The grant program provides a large share of the money available from the state for local communities looking to fight opioid issues, said Laura Anderson, prevention administrator for the Department of Human Services’ Behavioral Health Division.

The agency also provides free training and technical assistance and assists communities in networking and implementing evidence-based strategies, she said.

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