New funding and technology available for opioid treatment

Communities worried about opioid and other substance abuse received two significant pieces of great news this month: one involves free money and the other involves free telehealth technology. The Distance Learning and Telemedicine program, initiated several years ago, is comprised of two funding steams – traditional DLT projects and opioid-specific projects.The traditional DLT fund helps rural communities use telecommunications to connect to each other and to the world. Projects may address opioid treatment but are not required to. Projects that do address opioid issues will receive 10 “special consideration points,” which can boost an applicant’s rankings in funding decisions. (Project that have science, technology, engineering and math [STEM] education as their primary purpose also qualify for consideration points.) Deadline for these proposals is May 15, 2019.Proposals competing in the opioid-specific telemedicine program are due one month earlier on April 15, 2019. In this funding category, projects that work in 220 “at-risk” counties will receive 30 special consideration points.