OneOhio Sends $960,158 to Four Stark County Addiction Projects

Four Stark County organizations will split $960,158 from the OneOhio Recovery Foundation's second regional grant round, money drawn from Ohio's share of the national opioid settlements and directed at syringe exchange, youth prevention and recovery support in and around Canton. The awards, announced Friday, include the largest single grant in the group: $381,000 to Canton City Public Health for a harm reduction expansion that will add medications for opioid use disorder on site.

The recipients illustrate how broadly Ohio's settlement money is being spread. Alliance City Health Department receives $132,233, the Boys & Girls Club of Massillon gets $150,000, Canton City Public Health takes $381,000 and CommQuest Services receives $296,925.

Where the money goes

Alliance's grant funds SWAP, short for Stark-Wide Approach to Prevention. The health department will use it to slow the spread of HIV and hepatitis C through syringe exchange, expand testing, and distribute naloxone, fentanyl and xylazine test strips, drug-disposal bags and referrals into treatment and mental health services.

Canton City Public Health's larger award, titled Enhancing Harm Reduction Services for All, expands access to existing services, builds out community education, and integrates medications for opioid use disorder into the department's own sites.

CommQuest Services, a long-running Stark County behavioral health provider, will spend $296,925 on a Recovery Community Engagement Initiative built around community reinforcement, events, a recovery app and case management for people trying to stay connected to care. The Boys & Girls Club of Massillon's $150,000 is the only award in the group aimed squarely at preventing substance use before it starts, funding programming for young people.

"Ohio's opioid settlement dollars are most powerful when they reach the organizations and communities closest to the work of prevention, treatment and recovery," Alisha Nelson, executive director of the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, said in the announcement.

Frank Forchione, a Stark County Common Pleas judge who chairs OneOhio's Region 6 board, framed the grants as a response to needs local partners identified themselves. "Stark County needs a response that works at every stage," he said. "That means helping young people make healthy choices, reducing immediate health risks and making sure that people leaving treatment remain connected to housing, services and community support."

A foundation built to hold settlement dollars

OneOhio is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to distribute 55% of Ohio's opioid settlement funds, organized around regional boards that review and rank local proposals rather than a single statewide competition. Its Regional Grant Cycle 2 opened this year after an earlier cycle that underwrote a first wave of prevention and treatment projects.

The Stark County awards belong to the second slate of Cycle 2 decisions. At its September board meeting, the foundation approved more than $2.4 million for 11 projects across the state, building on a first slate approved Aug. 5 that carried more than $40 million for 206 projects. All told, OneOhio has now committed more than $42.4 million to 217 projects in the current cycle, with individual awards still being announced region by region.

The foundation's September meeting also drew a visit from Gov. Mike DeWine, who helped shape the memorandum of understanding that created OneOhio and used the appearance to urge the board to look for investments that pull in other funding. The board's next public meeting is scheduled for Nov. 18 in Columbus.

Why harm reduction keeps winning

Ohio's settlement architecture spreads money across prevention, treatment, recovery and harm reduction rather than concentrating it in one lane, and the Stark County slate shows what that looks like in practice. Three of the four awards touch harm reduction or recovery support in some way, and only one is a conventional treatment program.

That mix reflects both the priorities local reviewers set and a piece of arithmetic familiar to counties across the country: the interventions that reach people still using drugs — test strips, naloxone, clean syringes — are cheaper and faster to stand up than a new clinic. Syringe exchange in particular remains politically contested in parts of the country even as public health agencies treat it as settled practice, and its appearance on a rural Ohio health department's grant list shows how far settlement money has widened what counts as a legitimate use of harm reduction dollars.

Whether the spending reduces overdose deaths in Stark County is a question the grants themselves cannot answer. OneOhio funds programs in regional rounds rather than against a single statewide metric, and the foundation says final awards for Cycle 2 will continue to be announced in the coming weeks.