$25 million plan takes shape for drug-recovery aid in Palm Beach County

A legal battle has resulted in more than $25 million in the form of settlement funds for Palm Beach County, which may be used to aid in addressing the ramifications of the opioid epidemic, county documents show.

Palm Beach County wants to help curb the drug-related hardships faced by the community. During a workshop Tuesday, county commissioners will be presented with recommendations on how to ensure the $25 million in funds goes far.

“Until we fix the addiction problem that is manmade, we’re going to be chasing the devil,” said Maureen Kielian, chair of the Behavioral Health, Substance Abuse and Co-Occurring Disorders advisory committee and leader of Southeast Recovery Advocates.

The focus needs to be on addressing addiction rather than just eradicating the “pill of the day,” she said. The goal: to reach the root issues behind addiction, such as the state of people’s mental health.

Kielian is a mom to a son who has dealt with chronic relapse. “My son knows more people dead from his high school class than I do,” she said. “How sad is that?”

The county first approved a plan by the committee in 2022. The mission: “Addressing substance use and behavior disorders by providing evidence-based prevention, medication-assisted treatment, and recovery support services.”

Recommendations from this year’s proposal include:

— Foster community-based education resources about substance abuse to foster increased recognition of warning signs.

— Provide essential services for people re-entering society such as housing, “recovery-ready” work environments and transportation.

— Create public awareness campaigns to “build resilience in individuals and communities.”

The advisory committee suggests 90% of the funds should be allocated toward “social determinants,” which are factors that influence health outcomes, such as the conditions where people live, work and play. This could include housing and community support, but the county will ultimately decide that.

The other 10% is suggested to be used for “deep-end and crisis care,” which could be medical detoxes or partial hospitalization.

The committee also suggests rolling out a three-part process, the first part being addressing treatment, the second part addressing prevention and the third part addressing “other strategies.”

Brent Schillinger, who serves on the committee and represents the Palm Beach County Medical Society, said the plan was developed to stop a concept called “treat and street.”

“What happens to all the people who fall between the cracks? What happens to the people who repeatedly go back to using drugs, go back into treatment and recovery?” he said. “There’s just a lot of people falling into those numbers.”

Kielian said friction could rise during Tuesday’s workshop if the county probes into where chunks of the $25 million will be spent. Currently, the plan for the settlement funds does not propose specific allocations.

“Everybody’s going to go, ‘I want that money,’ because it’s like now the money is here. Everybody wants it,” she said. “When the actual money is in the bank, when those checks are written, that’s when it’ll start.”

Though hair-splitting may occur over exactly how much money should go where, Kielian said ultimately this pot of money is a chance for the state, which she believes failed to act for far too long, to “actually get something right.”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for people who have been destroyed by this public health crisis,” she said.

Schillinger said he believes everyone who is or could be involved in this process has good intentions.

“There’s a number of entities, number of organizations, who are in this space. And I would say pretty much everybody who we have met with and spoken to and heard from has the same goals in mind,” he said.

Lawsuits directed at the pharmaceutical industry accused drug companies of misleading patients and doctors on the dangers of prescription medicine, which escalated into a crisis the county and state faced beginning during the early 2000s.

The problem was especially bad in Florida where billions of opioid pills, such as OxyContin, poured into the state.

Opioid addictions and overdoses had seen significant increases, around the 2010s, killing more than 1,000 people every year in South Florida alone. Florida became the “epi-center of overdose deaths” and “fraud and abuse in the treatment and recovery residence sector nationally,” according to the county’s advisory committee on behavioral health, substance use and co-occurring disorders.