Opioid Task Force receives $300K grant to combat overdoses in rural communities

The Health Resource Service Administration (HRSA) has given the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the North Quabbin Region a one-time $300,000 Rural Communities Opioid Response Program federal grant that will fund a new program to reduce fatal overdoses through prevention, treatment and support services.

According to an October press release by the task force, the grant will be used for The Archway Program (TAP), a joint endeavor between the Community Opportunity, Network, Navigation, Exploration, and Connection Team (CONNECT) program and HUB Project to help reduce fatal and non-fatal opioid overdoses for unhoused individuals in 27 rural communities in the Franklin and Worcester counties.

“The primary goal of The Archway Program is to reduce the number of opioid-related fatalities among individuals who are unhoused in our rural region,” Debra McLaughlin, project coordinator for the Opioid Task Force, explained. “When we analyze the data that came through our Connect Critical Incident Management System, or CIMS, we had a significant percentage of individuals who, unfortunately, died of opioid-related overdoses.”

According to HRSA, the Rural Communities Opioid Response Program provides funding to organizations that forward the program’s goals of “strengthening and expanding SUD/OUD prevention, treatment, and recovery services” in rural communities across the United States. The Archway Program is one of the 38 initiatives funded by the Rural Communities Opioid Response Program nationally, the press release explains.

“The Archway Program is about compassion, dignity and meeting people where they are. By expanding outreach and treatment for those struggling with addiction and homelessness, we’re not only providing services—we’re offering hope,” said Congressman Jim McGovern said about the grant award.

The three co-chairs of the Opioid Task Force — Franklin County Sheriff Lori Streeter, Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan and Register of Probate John F. Merrigan — shared their appreciation for the grant in the press release, with Sullivan saying “These forces work together for good to help address substance misuse and provide a real chance for homeless individuals to get connected to much-needed services in real-time.” 

McLaughlin explained that the grant was awarded to The Archway Program in September, and the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office acts as its fiscal agent.

Although the government shutdown since Oct. 1 has impacted the start of the grant, McLaughlin said The Archway Program partners at the Community Health Center of Franklin County, North Quabbin Community Coalition, Tapestry Health and The Wildflower Alliance have been meeting to plan the logistics, such as scheduling where the outreach visits will be done region-wide, to help forward this effort while the shutdown continues and their federal partners are furloughed.

According to the data from Kelley Research Associates’ Critical Incident Management System (CIMS) provided in the press release, 15% of overdose incidents occurred with a 9.4% fatality rate. McLaughlin said the “North Star” of this program is to address this rate by using the grant funding to implement prevention, treatment, and service outreach to the population, and to improve health outcomes.

This funding will support a variety of support options. For prevention, the grant can be used to purchase items such as naloxone or fentanyl test strips. For treatment options, the program can expand mobile outreach to people living in encampments or isolated areas experiencing opioid use disorder, or substance use disorder, with options for health screenings, wound care and other social services.

This program can also offer supportive services for connecting unhoused people with opioid or substance use disorder, or behavioral challenges with shelters, low-barrier housing, recovery programs and health insurance assistance.

According to the 2024 Point-in-Time Count, used to track how many homeless people are living without shelter in towns across the region overseen by the Three County Continuum of Care, a program of Community Action Pioneer Valley, the number of homeless people in Franklin County had more than doubled, and 252 people were sleeping in shelters or outside compared to 104 in January 2023.

This data also highlights the number of homeless people who’ve reported experiencing some type of drug addiction while in emergency shelter, transitional housing or unsheltered, with 100 people reporting chronic substance abuse in the 2024 data for Franklin, Berkshire and Hampshire counties.

As part of this grant, McLaughlin said research scientists Pamela Kelley and Dr. Sean Varano of Kelley Research Associates will document the progress of this grant and The Archway Program’s effectiveness. They’ve already worked on data for the CONNECT program since 2021 through the CIMS database, and have done data work across Massachusetts in various sectors.

“We look forward to our role as a research partner on TAP, where we can apply our expertise and insight working with 13 other counties in Massachusetts, as well as in Rhode Island and South Carolina, to strengthen efforts to serve homeless individuals in their communities,” Pamela Kelley, executive director of Kelley Research Associates, said about their involvement in the program.

As this is a one-time grant for The Archway Program, McLaughlin said the hope is to find other sources of revenue for the program after the completion of this grant cycle.

“We’re really grateful to be part of this national cohort, and we are looking forward to learning a lot, but we don’t consider this a one-and-done kind of project,” she said. “We’ve been very thoughtful to build this effort based on community need and data that we have available, and we are actively looking for other funding sources as we speak, to keep this going after this particular grant period ends.”