Virginia’s State Opioid Response Grant

Virginia is utilizing State Opioid Response (SOR) grant funds to respond to needs and challenges related to opioid use disorders, opioid overdose deaths, and stimulant use disorders. Using a comprehensive, multi-pronged approach, Virginia is ensuring that SOR funds support state and local initiatives across the continuum of care; from prevention to treatment to recovery.

The SOR grant is a federally funded formula grant distributed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). For the first two years of the SOR grant (federal fiscal years 2019 and 2020), Virginia received over $15 million each year. A new round of SOR funding was awarded in 2020 and Virginia is receiving more than $27 million for federal fiscal year 2021.

The Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) manages and distributes SOR funds for Virginia. A majority of the SOR funds are disbursed to the 40 Community Service Boards (CSBs) across the state. These entities offer direct substance use disorder and opioid use disorder (OUD) programs and services to address prevention, treatment, and recovery in communities across the state. In addition to CSBs, several other Virginia state agencies and organizations are engaged as partners on the SOR grant, both in implementation and evaluation roles. These partners include Virginia Commonwealth University's Virginia Higher Education Collaborative, the Virginia Department of Corrections, Virginia Department of Health, and Virginia Department of Social Services.

Virginia SOR initiatives align with the strategic goals of Virginia's Governor's Executive Leadership Team on Opioids and Addiction.  Implementing strategies that are complementary to this team's action plan provides an opportunity to leverage state resources in addition to SOR funds to address Virginia's opioid crisis. The alignment also provides greater opportunities for broad, system-level change and sustainability of SOR-funded initiatives.

To support grant implementation, The OMNI Institute (OMNI) has worked with Virginia to establish comprehensive capacity building and evaluation planning across prevention, treatment, and recovery. OMNI designed the evaluation to track grant progress and outcomes and created an evaluation plan describing how each objective is measured and the data collection processes in place to assess progress toward desired outcomes.

For more information on SOR activities and the evaluation, please see the Reports page.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-2/subtitle-A/chapter-II/part-200#200.112 Per 2 C.F.R. § 200.112-1113 The Federal awarding agency must establish conflict of interest policies for Federal awards. The non-Federal entity must disclose in writing any potential conflict of interest to the Federal awarding agency or pass-through entity in accordance with applicable Federal awarding agency policy. Failure to adhere to these statues will result in immediate termination of funding.

Virginia’s State Opioid Response (SOR) grant is awarded at the discretion of DBHDS and SAMHSA. All recipients of SOR funding supports evidence-based prevention, treatment and recovery services to address opioid and stimulant misuse and use disorders, including for cocaine and methamphetamine. The SOR grant is not intended to be utilized as a long-term or permanent funding source. All SOR proposals must include a realistic plan for financial sustainability beyond the grant period.