Chair Cabán on opioid settlement funding allocation process

I want to ask a little bit about harm reduction and the opioid settlement funding.

So how is it determined how much opioid settlement funds flow to DOHMH?

Yeah, thank you for that question.

Just to say right at the top, this is a considerable opportunity for us to redress some of the harms that were caused by the opioid manufacturers.

I think we see this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity, really.

We have just a small part of the funding that comes in, as you know.

The other agencies are OCME as well as H&H.

And so we have control and oversight over the portions that we have access to.

And so we can defer questions to sort of the high

higher level how much is given to which agency to OMB.

Can you talk a little bit about, I mean, I guess specifically for DOHMH, like how much you're eligible to receive and what the timeline is for receiving it and when you anticipate not receiving it anymore, when does the funding stop?

The timeline and yeah let me hand it over to dr rebecca lynn walton thank you yeah um so how it happens is that city hall

determines it's in four-year increments and um as we approach the end then we keep talking about more and so i know i was um

part of like the early discussions and so they were looking at sort of a 10 to 20 year timeline for all the funds but um

also conversations are ongoing about it so i would say so every dollar we've been given just to be clear is out the door into communities for at least 40 organizations have received funding across the full continuum on every borough

and and really focusing on both populations and communities hardest hit by

the opioid crisis so all of those dollars are out the door and we just posted yesterday our updated report with all of those organizations and then as they ramp up metrics get out as well so the overarching question you asked was how our decisions made

and we regularly meet with City Hall and our other partners and community members we're about to launch a listening tour as well that's what we did last time to figure out from community members

How they want dollars spent.

So at all moments, we're really talking about how to do it.

Do we need to speed up?

Do we need to slow down?

Efforts to do it.

And will any of the funding, will the Office of Community Safety be eligible to receive any of the opioid settlement funding?

And are you guys planning to transfer any opioid settlement funding to the Office of Community Safety?

We currently are not in any discussions about transferring any of those dollars over to the Office of Community Safety.