Over the course of 18 years, Ohio and its communities are receiving nearly $2 billion from pharmaceutical companies to compensate for harm caused by opioids. The Ohio Newsroom is following the money. This is our settlement story of the month.
The largest opioid settlement to date is a nationwide $26 billion deal with Johnson & Johnson, plus three of the country’s biggest drug wholesalers.
Ohio will receive upwards of $800 million from this deal — and of all the counties in the state, Hamilton County is expected to receive the biggest chunk of that change, according to data compiled by KFF Health News.
Tana Weingartner, senior editor and reporter with WVXU in Cincinnati, joined The Ohio Newsroom to talk about how the county is spending its payout.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
How much money is Hamilton County getting?
“Hamilton County is expected to receive more than $12.3 million over 18 years from this settlement deal. Just looking at the county level, it might look like that's more than any other county in the state. However, there are lots of municipalities within Hamilton County, like the city of Cincinnati and Norwood, and they're all getting their own pots of money, too. So if you add all of that up in total, Hamilton County and its municipalities are expecting to get about $19.8 million.
“That total number is less than Franklin County, Columbus and all of the municipalities in Franklin County are getting because [Franklin County] has a larger population than Hamilton County. And the way the money is being distributed is based on population and the impact of the opioid epidemic, according to the memorandum of understanding. One other thing that it is important to note, Cuyahoga and Summit counties are not part of this national $26 billion lawsuit, and that's because they have separate settlement deals.”
How is the county spending its settlement funds?
“It does get a little confusing here because [Hamilton County] is doing different things with different money. But a group called the Hamilton County Addiction Response Coalition brings all the players together: law enforcement, experts, medical professionals. And they're looking for holistic solutions. So they've hired an addiction coordinator for the county. They've built out care pods at the jail so people can start getting help if they're arrested. They funded community-based treatment programs, prevention programs, drug takebacks. They've done a bunch of harm reduction programming, like providing testing strips and xylazine wound kits.
“One other thing — quick response teams are huge. Rather than just sending police to opioid related calls, [the county] sends a team of medical professionals, mental health and addiction workers, crisis counselors, so they can try to get someone into treatment. These have been very successful, and people have come from around the country, even Canada, to learn about that model.”
Is the money helping people affected by the opioid epidemic?
“Obviously, [the opioid epidemic] is still a huge problem, but [Hamilton County] is seeing some successes. Overdose death numbers have decreased year after year for the last three years. And the county is really focused on tracking all of the data. They're working with the University of Cincinnati to analyze the numbers to see how they're spending the money and what's working.
“Here's one example: Hamilton County Commission President and member of the One Ohio Recovery Foundation Board Denise Driehaus says the county recently used what they call a ‘data dump’ to determine how many of the region's overdose deaths were among people who'd been incarcerated at some point. So they're really focused on using the data to focus their areas of effort. Driehaus says other communities are looking at Hamilton County as a model to learn about their coalition work, their opioid settlement work, deflection work and so on.”
