Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office creating public website for allocation of Opioid Abatement Funds
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – After strong efforts in data collection, the Office of the Attorney General in Kentucky has now created a more transparent way for the public to view how opioid abatement funds are being distributed across the state.
After discussions in Frankfort, the opioid abatement fund and the University of Kentucky Rapid Actionable Data for Response, created a dashboard on their website showcasing how much of the over one billion dollars have been sent to communities all across the state.
“We’ve created this transparency dashboard that lives on our website that now allows people to look up, by county or by city, to see how many opioid settlement funds have gone to their county. And then how are those local officials determining what that money is used for,” said Deputy Director for the Opioid Abatement Fund Jessie Halladay.
The money from the fund comes from lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies that created the opioid epidemic. Halladay says that the Attorney General’s office owes it to the public as these funds are a result of countless deaths and destruction of families across the state.
“It’s important to the attorney general, to the commission members, to make sure that the information is readily available so that folks can know that the money is being used for the purposes it was designed for. The attorney general often refers to this as blood money, because it is. It is brought to us based on the loss of life and other things that happen to families, to communities apart, to put us into unsafe and unhealthy conditions because of this drug scourge,” Halladay said.
Decisions regarding where resources are allocated are made up of a commission consisting of medical professionals, state legislators, law enforcement and family members of victims. Halladay says that there is still opportunities for nonprofits and communities to receive financial support and encourages those, especially in rural areas, to apply.
To check out their new dashboard, you can click here.
