On Tuesday, the Cardinal Health Foundation announced that it has awarded over $3 million in grants to more than 70 nonprofit organizations to support local efforts to combat the opioid epidemic across Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The grants are being made through the Cardinal Health Foundation’s Generation Rx program and are funded by Cardinal Health’s Opioid Action Program, launched last fall.
Grants were awarded in the following categories:
- Prevention education: To expand medication safety education for thousands of students in K-12 schools and universities, using Generation Rx educational materials.
- Best practices in pain medication use: To support healthcare organizations as they work with prescribers to transform the way they help patients manage chronic, non-cancer pain, with fewer opioids prescribed.
- Community-level responses: To support multi-sector collaborative work to reduce opioid addiction, overdoses and opioid-related deaths in eight communities in Ohio, home to Cardinal Health’s headquarters and nearly 7,000 employees.
Recipients included Community Action for Capable Youth (CACY) of Mansfield, which received a prevention education grant. Other area recipients included OneEighty, Inc. of Wooster.
“Thanks to a multi-million-dollar investment in the Foundation through Cardinal Health’s Opioid Action Program, we are able to support many more organizations as they work to reduce the rate of opioid misuse and addiction in their communities,” said Jessie Cannon, vice president of Community Relations at Cardinal Health.
The Opioid Action Program is a multi-prong initiative to help communities in four of the nation’s hardest-hit states fight the opioid epidemic. Each element of the program is cited by leading experts, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) and the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, as critical to reducing opioid misuse, abuse and addiction. The Opioid Action Program builds on Generation Rx, created through a partnership with the Cardinal Health Foundation and The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy to raise awareness and knowledge about the dangers of prescription drug misuse.
Grantees will participate in learning collaboratives led by subject matter experts, who will help guide their work and share best practices. For prevention education grants, faculty and staff from The Ohio State University Colleges of Pharmacy and Social Work will provide medication safety education expertise and program evaluation to prevention education grantees and CompDrug’s Youth to Youth International will provide expertise in effective youth-led prevention.
According to its website, “CACY was founded in 1978 and is a nonprofit community coalition. A group of parents met with counselors and administrators from schools who were concerned about the use of alcohol and drugs by Mansfield and Richland County youth… CACY is now one of the oldest surviving county-wide grassroots prevention coalitions recognized by the State of Ohio and federal government. CACY continues to offer, develop, implement, facilitate and coordinate violence, tobacco, alcohol and drug prevention, and education activities. CACY’s programs help to develop healthy, capable, caring young people who value themselves, others and their community and who make positive, healthy lifestyle choices.”
