The Clark County Agency for Substance Abuse Policy board voted Thursday to establish a subcommittee to focus on the next steps of the agency’s involvement in a multimillion dollar grant partnership aimed at reducing overdose deaths in the community.

In April 2019, the University of Kentucky announced Clark was one of 16 Kentucky counties selected to benefit from an $87 million federally-funded HEALing Communities grant.

The grant is the largest grant ever awarded to the University of Kentucky, and seeks to study the participating communities and implement practices that will reduce overdose deaths by 40 percent over the next three years.

The National Institutes of Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration launched the HEALing Communities Study to prevent and treat opioid misuse and opioid use disorder within highly-affected communities and reduce opioid-related deaths.

“UK researchers are hoping to reduce deaths and substance abuse by leveraging existing community resources and initiatives to deploy a robust and comprehensive set of evidence-based interventions,” according to an April 2019 press release about the grant.

Kentucky is one of four states selected for the grant, including Ohio, Massachusetts and New York.

Other counties selected for the grant include Boyd, Boyle, Fayette, Floyd, Franklin, Kenton, Madison, Bourbon, Campbell, Carter, Greenup, Jefferson, Jessamine, Knox and Mason counties.

During Thursday’s ASAP meeting, members heard about what they will need to do in the coming months to get the process running.

Dr. Laura Fanucchi gave an overview of what the care approach the ASAP board takes could look like.

According to Fanucchi, each facilitating agency can develop its own plan of action, but there are some required measures. Agencies can “get creative” about how they approach the required measures, though, Fanucchi said.

Agencies essentially have a “menu” of care approaches they can implement, which will include measures to address overdose prevention education and naloxone (the overdose reversal drug) distribution to high-risk populations, effective delivery of medications for opioid use disorder maintenance treatment and safer opioid prescribing and dispensing.

After data is collected from the community, the ASAP board and researchers from UK’s Center on Drug and Alcohol Research will develop a plan to reduce overdose deaths in the community.

Dr. April Young told ASAP members that plan would look at things already in place, what is working, how to capitalize on and expand those efforts, and how to address what is not working in better ways.

Young laid out a quick timeline for the agency to develop a subcommittee and establish community champions and liaisons for the project.

Those interested in learning more about the grant, joining ASAP or participating in the grant process can email ASAP Coordinator Melissa Stocker at melissastocker@bellsouth.net.