Council reports $17.6 million paid to cycle 1 grantees; state program reports nearly one million naloxone units distributed since 2017

The Tennessee Opioid Abatement Council received multiple operational updates on April 28: the OAC office reported about $17,600,000 in community grant cycle 1 invoice payments processed; staff summarized semiannual reporting from grantees on naloxone; and Tony Jackson of the Tennessee Department of Health described the department’s TN Save a Life program and its naloxone distribution activities.

Executive Director Mary Shelton told the council that $17.6 million in cycle 1 invoices had been paid “as of this week and last week,” and thanked grantees for submitting clean invoices. Shelton said there were 16 approved cycle 1 grant awards, 13 implemented contracts (soon to be 13 executed contracts in staff wording), and 103 semiannual reports completed and returned by grantees. The office added distribution questions to county and grantee reporting after the legislature passed House Joint Resolution 100, which urged allocation to overdose reversal medication efforts; the attorney general’s office advised staff the resolution does not change state statute but that the OAC should collect data on naloxone purchases and distributions.

From grantee reporting submitted before the added questions, staff said 22 community cycle 1 grants included naloxone purchase or distribution as a component and that grantees reported distributing 15,927 units of naloxone — staff cautioned the reports did not always specify whether the naloxone was purchased with OAC funds or obtained from another source.

Tony Jackson, director of prevention for the Tennessee Department of Health’s substance use work, presented the TN Save a Life program. Jackson said the program provides training on overdose recognition and naloxone administration, focuses priority naloxone distribution on populations at highest risk and the people most likely to respond to overdoses, and supports regional overdose prevention specialists who do tailored outreach. Jackson told the council the program has distributed nearly 1,000,000 naloxone units since program inception in 2017 and that in the most recent full year the program distributed nearly 215,000 units. He also reported more than 11,000 recorded reversals attributed to distribution and training efforts the state program supports.

David Lewis, the OAC’s new quality director, presented preliminary county‑level analyses of community grant cycle 1 funding relative to county opioid overdose death metrics. Lewis described two visual approaches: (1) funding aggregated by county and compared to 2023 overdose death rates per 100,000 (counties sorted and grouped into quintiles), where the top two quintiles received 57.6% of cycle 1 funding; and (2) funding per overdose death (total grant funds divided by reported overdose deaths in 2023), which shows smaller, high‑per‑death allocations in some rural counties and lower per‑death amounts in large counties with many deaths (Davidson, Knox, Shelby, Hamilton appear lower on per‑death shading under that method).

Council members discussed how to present the data for cycle 2 application review. Suggestions included adding columns to the submission spreadsheet with the funding‑per‑death metric, providing Grantee Division cuts, and adding dollar‑range histograms to clarify quintile shading. Members emphasized the need to consider raw death counts and rates per 100,000 alongside county population and to ensure date ranges for overdose statistics align with grant effective dates when comparing allocations to outcomes.

No formal council vote was required on these informational items; staff said they will include the additional data columns and options for the council to review as cycle 2 materials are prepared.