Pa. gets more federal aid to fight opioid crisis

HARRISBURG » Pennsylvania is getting another $26.5 million in federal aid to help fight opioid addiction, and one focus will be to establish more medication-assisted treatment programs in rural areas, Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration said Wednesday.

The money is the second installment of a two-year grant to help states fight the opioid crisis, and Secretary of Health Rachel Levine said it’s the primary funding for prevention and treatment.

Secretary Jennifer Smith of Wolf’s Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs said county public health agencies that received a big portion of the money last year, primarily for treatment programs, will be freer to use it for prevention programs in the coming year.

She said last year’s federal aid was more heavily restricted for treatment programs.

Wolf’s administration also plans to expand the reach of medication-assisted treatment programs that it funded last year with federal aid. That money helped set up four programs anchored by regional health systems.

The administration plans to establish at least three more regional programs through health systems, with a focus on extending treatment into rural areas through physicians’ offices, officials said.

Levine said there are encouraging signs in the battle against addiction.

Opioid prescriptions are down in Pennsylvania — the state is working to educate doctors about the dangers of prescribing opioids — and officials are finding that the number of overdose deaths is no longer rising in some counties. Also, use of the overdose antidote naloxone by police, emergency responders and others has saved nearly 7,000 lives, and Smith said a hotline set up in 2016 to connect people to treatment options — 1-800662-HELP — has received over 26,000 calls.

Still, Levine said Pennsylvania is one of the hardesthit states in drug overdose deaths, according to federal data, and there is no guarantee that federal aid to fight opioid addiction will continue. In the coming year, Smith said the Wolf administration plans to put more money into ad campaigns to reach Spanish-speaking populations and to emphasize that addiction is a disease, not a result of poor choices.

The administration also hopes to bolster efforts to help pregnant women or mothers with children take care of their children while fighting their addiction, Smith said.