As Arizona continues to struggle with overdose deaths driven by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, state and county health departments are being forced to hit the brakes on one of their most powerful tools in the fight: the surveillance data that informs their opioid settlement fund interventions.
The CDC’s Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) program has been a cornerstone of Arizona’s overdose prevention strategy for the last 6 years. OD2A equips state, county health departments, cities and other jurisdictions with detailed surveillance data on both fatal and nonfatal overdoses, info that’s essential for designing, evaluating and testing public health interventions.
Without OD2A data, overdose prevention becomes guesswork.
This week Secretary Kennedy decided to delay (and likely cancel) $140M in OD2A federal grants. Public health departments are now bracing for a major data blackout.
Addiction funding withheld by Kennedy : NPR
The Arizona OD2A grant expires on September 1. The delay in renewing the grant has already forced jurisdictions to pause or shelve new surveillance activities just as opioid settlement funds, intended to mitigate this very crisis, begin flowing into local communities.
A Historic Billion Opioid Settlement: What It Means for Arizona’s Public Health
Arizona is slated to receive more than $1.1B from national opioid settlements over the next 18 years, with planning underway in counties and cities. But using those funds effectively requires knowing what to fund, where, and for whom.
That’s exactly what OD2A delivered and what Kennedy has delayed and will likely delete.
Cities, counties, and the state now face spending their limited settlement dollars without the evidence needed to guide them, a counterproductive move that impairs effective intervention development.
By pulling back OD2A funding, the federal government is telling states to fly blind.
Secretary Kennedy’s pattern of sidelining evidence-based public health tools has already done tons of harm. If this one is left uncorrected, it’ll weaken overdose response efforts across Arizona and the nation resulting in unnecessary and avoidable deaths.
Making America Healthy Again indeed.
