How New Bedford Used a Needs Assessment to Guide its Opioid Settlement Spending
Why Needs Assessments? Principle 5 calls for state and local governments to develop equitable and transparent processes for deciding how to allocate settlement dollars. While much is already known about effective interventions across the prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery domains, the investments that state and local governments should prioritize depend on their unique community context. Needs assessments provide a framework for adopting Principles 5 and identifying the areas in which settlement dollars will have the greatest impact.
New Bedford, Massachusetts’ Needs Assessment: The New Bedford Municipal Opioid Abatement Funds Community Assessment offers a great example of how local governments can conduct a needs assessment to inform settlement spending. New Bedford’s approach demonstrates a thoughtful application of the four steps to conducting a needs assessment outlined in the Principles Quick Guide:
Step 1—Define the scope
New Bedford’s needs assessment explicitly identifies multiple key populations of focus to ensure that findings reflect the needs of different subgroups within the City. For example, the community survey conducted as part of the needs assessment was translated into Spanish and Portuguese to expand its reach, based on the languages most common in the diverse city. The survey also collected demographic data, such as information on race, ethnicity, and LGBTQIA2S+ identity. Interviews and focus groups were designed to engage key subgroups including, but not limited to, individuals with lived experience, family members, treatment and service providers, unhoused individuals, and justice-involved populations.
Step 2—Assign who will conduct the needs assessment
The assessment was prepared by the New Bedford Health Department, with support from the Greater New Bedford Opioid Task Force (GNBOTF). The City was able to leverage its existing overdose response infrastructure by engaging the Task Force to advise and inform the assessment. The Task Force was formed in 2015 to address opioid misuse and overdose in Greater New Bedford and already had an established network of more than 60 community partners, including hospitals, recovery and treatment centers, support services providers, law enforcement, and veteran-serving, community, and faith-based organizations.
Step 3—Choose the data
New Bedford utilized a robust mix of quantitative and qualitative data to shape the assessment’s recommendations. This included leveraging existing City-level data from the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS) on substance misuse outcomes, harm reduction service utilization, and BSAS program utilization. To supplement this information, New Bedford administered a community survey focused on substance use, that asked respondents to identify priority populations, key opportunities for investing settlement dollars, and major service gaps in the city. Additional qualitative data was collected through interviews and focus groups with subgroups, as described above.
Step 4—Put the needs assessment to use
New Bedford’s analysis of its needs assessment data resulted in the identification of 11 priority strategies that reflect community feedback, build on existing resources, and fill system gaps. After publishing the needs assessment, the city administered a Request for Proposal (RFP) process seeking community organizations to utilize settlement-funded grants for projects aligning with these strategies. Six grantees were selected for funding based upon a transparent proposal evaluation process. One funded community project example was $150,000 awarded to High Point Treatment Center to expand its Prevention Services to provide prevention, engagement, and early intervention to youth and families in New Bedford.
Key Takeaways: The Principles Team engaged with the New Bedford Health Department team, which included Alyssa DaCunha (assistant director), Jaclyn Dyson (director of special programs and grants), and Karen MacDonald (coordinator for the Greater New Bedford Opioid Task Force), to learn more about the city’s needs assessment process and broader settlement work. Key takeaways included:
1. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good: Qualitative data cannot feasibly capture the perspectives of every community member, and survey instruments are inherently subject to some limitations. However, when thoughtfully implemented, needs assessments provide valuable snapshots that support data-driven decision making. Local governments should also be transparent about the limitations of their findings.
2. Needs assessments support accountability: The results of New Bedford’s assessment reaffirmed needs that the City suspected were present. However, the process provided critical data to support funding priorities that could be transparently shared with the public, which is vital for accountability in the use of settlement funds.
3. It is important to engage community voices at every stage: Community engagement should continue after needs assessments are completed to promote ongoing transparency and trust. The planning process included voting among GNBOTF leaders and members to weigh in on options for allocating the funding across categories (GNBOTF subcommittee projects, community grants, etc.). A key part of the RFP process was inviting community members from agencies that did not apply for grant funding to review submissions. Applications were ranked based on a standard grading scale by each reviewer, then chosen based on the highest cumulative scores.