MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A statewide effort is underway to bring increased transparency and accountability for the allocation of West Virginia opioid settlement funding.
The West Virginia First Foundation commissioned the implementation of the West Virginia Wayfinder, an 18-month, data-driven needs assessment that will aim to determine how nearly three-quarters of $1 billion in opioid settlement funds will be used across the state to address substance use disorder. This will be done as part of collaboration with the WVU Health Affairs Institute, in partnership with the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs and Data Driven WV in the WVU John Chambers College of Business and Economics.
“This work will definitely be multifaceted,” said Data Driven WV Executive Director Joshua Meadows. “We’re going to comprehensively study substance use disorder in West Virginia, we’re going to cast a really wide net and get data from various sources.”
The West Virginia Wayfinder will work through an evaluation of how the disease continues to affect people, families, and communities across West Virginia and what services are in place to address ongoing issues. This will be done with the help of data that is collected on a statewide level with communications involving representatives from WVU, Data Driven WV, as well as local officials from all 55 West Virginia counties. The data, which will be collected through a variety of listening sessions and through collaborations with local leaders statewide, will then be analyzed to find ways to continue to support services that are helping those suffering from substance use disorder.
“We’ll take all of this data and we’re going to put it into a decision-making tool that can be used by anyone,” said Meadows. “This is for community leaders, this is for people who do this type of work for a living, and this is going to be the data that’s most relevant to help make those decisions on how to allocate this funding.”
Meadows also notes that the data collected as part of the West Virginia Wayfinder will be used directly by the West Virginia First Foundation and involve local service providers as part of the allocation process. Any funding allocated by the state-established nonprofit will include the feedback from both local officials and service providers that are a part of the six regions covering the state. This will be done in such a way that those in need will be able to directly benefit from the funds allocated from opioid settlement dollars.
“We’re going to look at all the data we can get from different agencies and all that stuff,” said Meadows. “We’re going to put that together, but that data is meaningless if you don’t partner it with the voices of the people that are affected.”
The ultimate goal for the West Virginia Wayfinder is to create an ongoing tool that can be used to keep tackling issues that have been addressed by the West Virginia First Foundation since its inception in 2023. Since then, over $35 million has been allocated to social services and local governing bodies across the Mountain State the provide services ranging from recovery housing to behavioral health specialists.
“I’d think you’d be hard pressed to find any West Virginian that hasn’t been affected by this in some way, whether it’s a family member, a friend, or a colleague, everybody knows somebody that’s been affected,” said Meadows. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, this amount of funding to go at this problem.”