MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The board that allocates opioid settlement funds to areas of the Mountain State affected by the crisis has plans to improve the application process for local organizations.

West Virginia First Foundation Executive Director Jonathan Board and Board Chairman Matt Harvey discussed some of the changes that are set to be implemented by the fund board of directors on WAJR’s Talk of the Town that will focus on addressing needs for local communities across the state with the help of regional panels. This will coincide with the announcement of the recipients of the remaining $8.8 million yet to be allocated as part of the initial $19.2 million distribution of opioid settlement dollars that had to repeat the application process before the end of January, an issue the foundation board hopes to address.

“We’re really starting to develop a new style that is very rigorous but will allow us to answer a call in its immediacy,” said Board. “So we’d be unencumbered by some of the traditional practices that maybe can get in the way of meaningful solutions,” he said.

The most notable change that will be seen to the grant request process for the WV First Foundation will be the expansion of regional expert panels that will aim to prioritize requests before they are made on a state level. According to Board, the panels will follow the same protocol made by members of the state board and will also include opportunities to share data and information from projects in other parts of the Mountain State. The hope is that it will allow for a process that could highlight the benefits of a specific program that could be used across the state and avoid any issues with for groups applying for a portion of the over $117 million in the opioid settlement fund.

“There are some things that are universal, there are some things that just work,” said Board on the need to increase collaborations between regions. “And what we found, though, is that each region, each county, each community, can have different solutions to the same problem,” he said.

The West Virginia First Foundation will also aim to emphasize more local involvement with the help of the new regionally based panels. This will be done with the inclusion of a combination of local lawmakers and qualified professionals as part of the panels, similar to the selection of regional representatives on the state board. There will be an effort to increase direct interactions with representatives of the WV First Foundation state panel so information can be given across the Mountain State to help support successful initiatives, assist in grant applications, and avoid redundancies.

“They’re elected by the mayors and the county commissioners of that region,” said Harvey on how the regional expert panels will be selected. “And so those sentiments, those community sentiments, and what’s needed can filter up through that process, it’s very unique in that way, and it also instills that it’s geographically diverse,” he said.

The hope for officials with WV First Foundation is that these changes to the grant process will allow for the over hundred million dollars, a part of the fund, to continue to be allocated statewide in a timely manner. While the recipients of the remaining $8.8 million in the initial allocation are expected to be announced in the coming months, there’s a goal that a formal regional process can be established sometime in spring 2025 so they can begin collaborating with region representatives on the foundation board of directors. With over 170 applications in the initial round of grants, the need to expand communications on a local level will appear to be all the more important, particularly in dealing with the opioid epidemic.

“We have to have the ability to engage directly, if someone comes to you and says, ‘You know what, I can cure cancer tomorrow,’ the last thing you would want to say is, ‘Alright, I’ll see you next November,'” said Board. “No, you want to know now, and you want to move forward,” he said.

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