Biden administration to invest $90 million in rural communities to help combat substance use disorders and improve access to maternal care

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Key Takeaways

On August 5, the Biden administration announced it would invest roughly $90 million to assist rural communities in combatting opioid use disorders (OUD) and other substance use disorders (SUD) and improve access to maternal and obstetrics care. The funds will be distributed by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) in the form of community-based grants, many of which were provided direct to counties.

HRSA’s Federal Office of Rural Health Policy awarded the nearly $90 million in funding through four key programs under the Rural Community Opioid Response Program (R-CORP):

The funding announced recently contributes to a total of $384 million in community-based grants and technical assistance provided by the Rural Community Opioid Response Program over the past 3 years. The program specifically targets HRSA designated rural areas, where substance misuse and overdose have been a persistent challenge in rural communities, due to the lack adequate prevention, treatment and recovery resources. Given the opioid epidemic’s impact on rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome coupled with growing disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality in these areas, the program also seeks to improve maternal and obstetrics health as a part of its overarching goal of ending the opioid epidemic.

Counties, with the assistance of these and other federal investments, serve as frontline providers of opioid and other substance use disorder treatment and prevention services, planning, operating, and financing community-based programs. For more information and resources on the county role in the opioid epidemic, click here.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

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