County Technical Assistance
While the Office of Prevention Science and Recovery (OPSR) was established by the Rutherford Opioid Board, the Office serves as a resource to other counties in Tennessee. Specifically, this is achieved through assisting counties with implementing data-driven,
evidence based approaches to utilize opioid abatement county funding.
As stated in the Johns Hopkins 5 Principles for the Use of Funds from the Opioid Litigation, local jurisdictions should "use evidence to guide spending" and also "develop a fair and transparent process for deciding where to spend the funding." Technical assistance provided by OPSR seeks to do just that across counties in Tennessee.
Assistance Provided to Counties Include:
Creating Applications to Receive Community Proposals
OPSR leverages extensive experience in writing for and managing local, state, and
federal grants for a variety of health related issues through oversight from the MTSU Center for Health and Human Services. Therefore, OPSR offers assistance to counties in creating a unique grant application specific
to their county's priorities and constructed strategically with metrics that will measure success. Community organizations
can complete this application to be reviewed by local officials to award funding directly
to community organizations.
Constructing Systems of Review to Score Community Proposals
When having a comprehensive grant application that collects specific information from
community organizations, it is imperative that review of this information is objective
and is accompanied by a quantitative score. Because of this, OPSR provides assistance to counties in constructing an objective scoring rubric that
can be used to evaluate proposals from the community requesting to utilize county abatement funds. This prioritizes awarding to funding
proposals that are rooted in data and removes bias in evaluation that could result
from solely receiving proposals through in-person presentations.
Reviewing and Scoring Community Proposals
Some Counties may desire to have an outside entity objectively score their community
proposals in order to ensure no conflicts of interests occur, or to even acquire an
expertise perspective on proposals. In both of these cases, OPSR offers assistance in constructing an objective review committee comprised of substance
use disorder and grant writing experts to score all proposals on behalf of a county. This allows local officials overseeing utilization of abatement
funding an opportunity to strengthen their consideration process when determining
local uses of their funding.
Measuring Success of Funding Utilization
Because Counties are expecting to receive abatement funding from 2021-2038, it is
crucial that counties have developed systems in place to measure success of uses with
abatement funds. To assist in this process, OPSR provides assistance to counties in measuring success of funding utilization and measuring the impact of abatement funded activities on the community through oversight
from the MTSU Data Science Institute. This is beneficial not only to inform the public on successful projects funded by
the County, but also to identify what changes could be made to maximize the impact
of County funded projects..
Cannon County
The MTSU Office of Prevention Science and Recovery (OPSR) has partnered with the Cannon
County Opioid Abatement Task Force to format an application for local organizations
to request funding from their opioid abatement funding as well as a transparent scoring
process. In addition, OPSR will be tracking the success of all county funded abatement
programs to measure the impact of these funds on the community.
Rutherford County
The MTSU Office of Prevention Science and Recovery (OPSR) oversees the screening and
scoring review for all proposals received from local organizations requesting Rutherford
County opioid abatement funding. This review process and application structure was
created by OPSR and reserves the final determination of awarding funding to the Rutherford
Opioid Board (ROB). In addition to acquiring all proposals on behalf of the ROB, OPSR
monitors the implementation of funding by measuring the local impact and success of
opioid abatement funded projects.
Williamson County
The MTSU Office of Prevention Science and Recovery (OPSR) has partnered with the Williamson
County Opioid Task Force to facilitate an external review committee to analyze applications
from local organizations to utilize their county opioid abatement funding. In addition,
OPSR will be tracking the success of all county funded abatement programs to measure
the impact of these funds on the community.
Click HERE to Inquire Technical Assistance
