Tools and Resources
If you’re looking for specific guidance on assessing your state or locality’s readiness to receive funds, decision-making around settlement allocations, reporting considerations, or how to incorporate the Principles, these supplemental resources can help. See our External Resources list below for links to additional guidance documents, reports, and resources of relevance.
Tools From the Principles
These ten indicators can be used by policymakers and advocates to help jurisdictions assess their overall readiness and guide their next steps. This document explains them in detail and gives specific actions that jurisdictions can take to align with each indicator.
This report provides information on the nine core abatement strategies described in the settlement agreements and discusses how jurisdictions can fund programs in each strategy that will save the most lives.
These tools, developed with the National Association of Counties, serve as quick reference guides to help states and local governments adopt the Principles in their management of opioid settlement funds:
- 2023: Quick Guide to Conducting a Needs Assessment
- 2023: Quick Guide to Creating a Settlement Council
- 2024: Quick Guide to Removing Policy Barriers
- 2024: Quick Guide to Monitoring Opioid Settlement Spending
- 2025: Quick Guide on Transparency for Opioid Settlement Fund Management (adapted from a guide developed by the Michigan Association of Counties)
- 2026: Quick Guide to Creating a Competitive RFP Process for Opioid Settlement Funds (adapted from materials developed by the Michigan Association of Counties)
Now that states and localities have been receiving payouts for several years, examples of innovative and promising efforts across the country are emerging. Read about six innovative programs, see case examples, and learn about the evidence underlying these strategies.
The following resources contain additional information that may be useful to those looking to make sure that the opioid settlement money is used to save the most lives. Please let us know if there are useful resources that are missing.
| Detailed looks at how the money is being spent | |
|---|---|
| Opioid Settlement Tracker | OpioidSettlementTracker.com tracks four categories of opioid settlement-related data—opioid settlements reached by state and local governments, states’ opioid settlement decision-making processes, states’ opioid settlement expenditures, and states’ opioid settlement grant-making to communities. |
| National Allocation of Opioid Settlement Funds by State | Shatterproof, in conjunction with KFF Health News and Johns Hopkins, detailed the structure and responsibilities of the advisory councils that assist in spending the opioid money. |
| State Approaches for Distribution of National Opioid Settlement Funding | The National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) provides an overview of how each state makes its spending decisions. |
| Local Opioid Settlement Spending Database | The Appalachia Community Education Group tracks how the money is being spent by cities and counties in the 13 states that make up Appalachia. |
| Information on Tribal opioid settlements | |
|---|---|
| Tribal Opioid Settlement Principles | A set of principles for tribal communities to consider when creating spending plans for use of the tribal opioid settlements. |
| Tribal Opioid Settlements | The official tribal opioid settlements website. |
| Resources for cities and counties | |
|---|---|
| National Association of Counties Opioid Solutions Center | The National Association of Counties (NACo) has developed Quick Guides, Strategy Briefs, Case Studies and more in an effort to help counties spend the settlement money effectively. |
| National Association of County and City Health Officials Overdose Prevention | The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) has prepared a range of resources, including monitoring and evaluation measures, to help health departments address opioid overdose deaths. |
| National Council for Mental Wellbeing (Tools for Overdose Prevention) | The National Council for Mental Wellbeing has compiled tools for state and local health departments focused on the inclusion of people with lived experience. |
| Resources for community groups | |
|---|---|
| Guides for Community Advocates on the Opioid Settlements | OpioidSettlementGuides.com is an encyclopedic summary of all 51 states' opioid settlement spending and decision-making processes, co-authored by Vital Strategies and Christine Minhee, J.D., of OpioidSettlementTracker.com. |
| Quick Guide for Understanding Opioid Settlements State-to-State | This eight page document from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) provides an overview of the state-by-state settlement process. |
| National Roadmap for Opioid Settlement Funds | A coalition of 237 groups has endorsed a roadmap, updated yearly, that provides recommendations on spending opioid settlement money. |
| Evidence-based uses of the settlement funds | |
|---|---|
| From the War on Drugs to Harm Reduction | This document from the Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University provides recommendations to policy makers and advocates on the use of the settlement funds. |
| Evidence Based Strategies for Abatement of Harms from the Opioid Epidemic | This report from the Legal Action Center described evidence-based strategies for the use of the settlement dollars. |
| State Toolkit to End the Nation’s Drug Overdose Epidemic | This American Medical Association (AMA) and Manatt Health report describes specific actions and strategies that states can take to remove barriers to evidence-based care. |
| Strategies for Effectively Allocating Opioid Settlement Funds | RAND has compiled resources and information related to the settlements, along with opioid-related research that they have conducted. |
| Bringing Science to Bear on Opioids | This report from the Association of Schools & Programs of Public Health gives recommendations on how to tackle the opioid epidemic. |
| Guidance for Investing the Opioid Settlement Funds in Primary Prevention | This report from the Partnership to End Addiction describes ways that communities can invest in primary prevention to prevent future addiction crises. |
| Avoiding Industry Influence in Settlement Spending FAQs | |
|---|---|
| FAQ: Opioid Overdose Reversal Products | This FAQ reviews the evidence base for several opioid overdose reversal agents and highlights the potential harms associated with high-dose products. |
| FAQ: Drug Disposal Initiatives | This FAQ provides an overview of drug disposal initiatives and drug deactivation products and details considerations for whether these strategies constitute appropriate uses of opioid settlement funds. |
| FAQ: Neuromodulation Devices for Opioid Withdrawal | This FAQ summarizes current evidence for neuromodulation devices for opioid withdrawal and where these devices might fit in the overdose prevention, treatment, and recovery continuum. |
| FAQ: Field-Based Drug Supply Surveillance Tools | This FAQ reviews the evidence on law enforcement use of handheld drug detection devices and whether they constitute effective investments of opioid settlement funds, while highlighting community-based drug checking programs as a promising alternative. |
| FAQ: Wastewater-Based Epidemiology for Drug Surveillance | This FAQ provides an overview of wastewater-based epidemiology for drug surveillance and details considerations for whether this strategy constitutes an appropriate use of opioid settlement funds. |
| Other Settlement Information | |
|---|---|
| National Opioid Settlement | This site, maintained by the plaintiffs in the settlements with Janssen, Cardinal, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, Teva, Allergan, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, and Kroger Co., provides the settlement agreements, FAQs and a chart showing which states are participating in which settlements. |
| Non-Opioid Remediation Tracker | Money from the national settlements that is used by state and local governments for non-remediation purposes is listed here. |
| National Opioid Abatement Trust II (NOAT II) | This is the official website for the national settlement reached with Mallinckrodt. |
| National Association of Attorney Generals | Information on the opioid investigations, litigation and settlements brought by the state Attorneys General. |
| Other resources | |
|---|---|
| State Model Legislation | The Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association (LAPPA) has put forward model state legislation for handling the opioid settlements. |
| FAQ: Primary Diagnoses for Providing Methadone in Settings Using the Hospital/Clinic Designation Exception | Federal regulations permit hospitals and carceral facilities to stock and dispense methadone if they register with the DEA as a “hospital/clinic .” A key provision for using the “hospital/clinic” designation to provide methadone is that patients must have a primary diagnosis other than addiction. This FAQ addresses questions about this diagnosis. |