Oregon Opens Gresham Opioid Treatment Clinic With Settlement Funds

Oregon opened an outpatient opioid treatment program in Gresham on Oct. 27 with $1.8 million from the state's share of opioid litigation settlements, the eleventh such clinic the state's settlement board has financed in a high-need region. Gov. Tina Kotek and Gresham Mayor Travis Stovall attended the ribbon cutting at the New Season Treatment Center, which had already begun admitting patients in September.

The clinic dispenses methadone and buprenorphine and pairs both medications with counseling, the standard outpatient model for opioid use disorder. Its service area covers East Multnomah County and the rural communities beyond it, where residents have had to travel outside the region for the same care.

"Treatment where people need it, when they need it, is absolutely critical to fighting the addiction crisis in Oregon," Kotek said in a statement released by her office. "We lose too many people on the path to recovery when there are gaps between communities and services."

Settlement money as the spine of the expansion

The funding came through the Oregon Opioid Settlement Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Board, the body that decides how the state and its local governments spend payments from the national opioid litigation. Health officials describe the Gresham site as the eleventh opioid treatment program the board has backed, a distribution designed to place medication access in regions that previously had none.

"Expanding access to addiction care saves lives," said Ebony Clarke, behavioral health director at the Oregon Health Authority. "Methadone reduces opioid-related harm, lowers the risk of fatal overdose, and helps people stabilize so they can rebuild their lives."

Jim Shaheen, chief executive of New Season, said the company had been working with the settlement board and local partners to move services closer to patients. New Season, which marks its 40th year in 2026, operates clinics in 20 states and treats roughly 33,000 patients a day across the network, according to figures the company provided to The Outlook.

Gresham is the company's second fixed-site clinic in Oregon; a mobile unit that travels to patients makes a third point of access. The clinic is open from 5 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 6:30 to 8:30 a.m. on Saturday, hours chosen because about three-quarters of New Season's patients hold jobs and need to be dosed before a shift. A call center runs around the clock.

Beds are being added, but not as fast as the workforce

The clinic opening lands in the middle of a larger build-out of Oregon's behavioral health capacity. Kotek's office says the state expects to add 1,722 licensed residential treatment beds, 769 of them designated for substance use disorder treatment. Of that total, 1,052 beds are already open and 670 more are scheduled to come online over the next two and a half years, an increase of more than 61 percent in licensed capacity. Before 2022, Oregon relied largely on project-specific appropriations and private investment to add treatment beds.

Speaking at the Gresham event, the governor pointed to the constraint that money alone does not solve. "We can't just have an open door," Kotek said. "We need the trained people to work in clinics like this."

The state has tried to address that gap through a Behavioral Health Talent Council convened by First Lady Aimee Kotek, which interviewed frontline providers and people with lived experience before issuing a report that now guides state hiring and training policy.

What the clinic can and cannot absorb

Staff at the Gresham site screen for conditions that have gone untreated alongside addiction — the routine primary care that people cycling through withdrawal and recovery often skip for years. Cases that exceed the clinic's scope are referred to partner organizations, including inpatient facilities, rather than closed at the door.

For the surrounding rural counties, the practical effect is measured in hours saved rather than in ribbon cuttings. Medication for opioid use disorder has to be taken continuously to work, which makes travel time and dosing hours part of the treatment itself rather than an inconvenience around it.

Local officials framed the opening in those terms. "We all have friends and family who are struggling with addiction," Stovall said. "This work New Season is doing in our community is vital."

Roberto Paredes, associate director of recovery services at the Portland nonprofit El Jardin, told The Outlook that the clinic only works as one piece of a regional system. "It takes all of us working together to make an impact," he said.

Whether the settlement board's clinic awards keep pace with the bed expansion is the open question. The board has now funded 11 opioid treatment programs across the state, and the governor's office describes the Gresham opening as one step in a build-out that still depends on hiring clinicians faster than Oregon has managed so far.