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.
