A federal program credited with helping bring down opioid overdose deaths has stalled due to a delay in receiving its grant money. Dr. Céline Gounder has more.

Washington

A federal program known as Overdose Data to Action (OD2A), which has contributed to a significant decrease in opioid overdose deaths, is currently stalled due to delays in grant funding. The grant, approved by Congress, is part of a broader $1 billion backlog in payouts at the Department of Health and Human Services. The OD2A program has supported state and local health departments by funding overdose reversal drugs, staff follow-up for overdose survivors, and drug supply monitoring, leading to a 25% reduction in overdose deaths since 2023.

The delay in funding is attributed to the administration's review of spending to prevent waste, fraud, or abuse, resulting in monthly rather than annual disbursements. This has left the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) unable to distribute funds to local agencies, potentially forcing life-saving programs to close. There is also concern that unspent funds could be rescinded, resulting in permanent cuts to these initiatives.

Delay in grant money for program reducing opioid overdose deaths

After years of climbing, opioid overdose deaths have dropped for two years straight. But CBS News has learned that a federal program credited with helping drive that decline is now stalled. It's grant money delayed, despite being approved by Congress. It's part of a larger $1 billion backlog of delayed grant payouts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Our medical contributor, Dr. Selene Gounder, joins me now. So doctor, what did this program do and how did it help? So the CDC program, called Overdose Data to Action, or OD2A, supported health departments, state and local health departments, across the country in numerous different ways. So they helped support by providing or paying for naloxone, also known as Narcan, which is an overdose reversal drug. They helped pay for staff that would follow up with people who survived an overdose to make sure they then got into treatment so that they continued to survive. They also did things like tracking, was there fentanyl or xylosine in the drug supply? And as a result of these programs, we've seen a 25% drop in overdose deaths since 2023. So that's really quite significant when you consider over 100,000 Americans were dying from overdose up until recently. So what happens when a careful, methodical, planned out program like that just goes away? Well, it's a really great question. So what we are gonna see is even as soon as next month, some of these programs could be forced to close. And when you have programs that are literally life-saving, helping prevent somebody from dying from a drug overdose, we can certainly expect for these numbers to go back up again. And why is this happening? Well, the administration says it's reviewing spending to make sure that there's not waste, fraud, or abuse. But instead, and so instead of giving the CDC all of its funding upfront for the year, as would normally be the case, it's giving it in monthly chunks. But the problem is, and the CDC is especially hard impacted by this because 80% of their budget actually goes out to state and local health departments, which people don't, I think, fully realize. It's not sitting there in Atlanta. It's going out. And if they don't have a full year of funding, they can't send those grants to the state and local health departments. So the spigot of funding just turns off. And what we're worried now is on top of that, if the funding doesn't get spent as budgeted, there's something called rescission, where the administration could say, you know what, you haven't spent it, even though you haven't had time to spend it, and the ability to, we're just gonna take it back. And that could result in real cuts. Right, indeed. Dr. Salinga-Gounder, thank you so much.

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