About the Summit
Convening August 5-6, 2024, the University of Notre Dame's Summit on the National Opioids Settlement: A Pathway to Hope will bring together attorneys general and other federal, state, and foundation leaders from across the country to develop strategies to most effectively distribute the nearly $50 billion in settlement dollars to maximize the impact on our communities and citizens. Led by the University of Notre Dame’s Poverty Initiative, the summit will explore how evidence-based practices can inform decision making and ensure that the National Opioids Settlement best helps those victims it is meant to serve.
Guest speakers will include Rev. Edward A. Malloy, C.S.C., former president of the University of Notre Dame and a member of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse board of directors, and Stephen T. Williams, mayor of Huntington, West Virginia, and chair of the United States Conference of Mayors Task Force on Substance Abuse, Prevention and Recovery Services. A workshop will be led by Notre Dame experts from the Department of Economics and Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities addressing how evidence-based practices can be used to evaluate distribution processes and discussing ways to design, pilot, and test interventions prior to scaling them up. More information on the background and purpose for the summit is below.
A preliminary schedule is available and will be updated in the coming weeks.
Background
The United States’ opioid epidemic is a nationwide public health crisis that continues to escalate. Between 2005 and 2014, the national rate of opioid-related hospitalizations increased 64% to 225 hospitalizations per 100,000 population. Death rates have also increased and in 2016, over 42,000 Americans died from an opioid overdose; a 27% increase in death rate from 2015. Initially driven by increased consumption and availability of pharmaceutical opioids, an increasing number of opioid overdoses are now related to heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl and fentanyl analogs. Addressing this epidemic requires addressing the stigma associated with opioid use disorders and their treatment, improving access to treatment options, and reducing opioid overdose fatalities.
Over $50 billion have been awarded through all opioid lawsuits, including $26 billion allocated to 46 states as part of the National Opioids Settlement. To effectively disburse the funds secured through these settlements, the majority of states, with support from their Attorneys General, have or intend to set up foundations tasked with helping those who have been impacted by the opioid crisis. Ohio and West Virginia have been the first two states to take this step, with the OneOhio Recovery Foundation and the West Virginia First Foundation, respectively.
Notre Dame and the Need for Evidence-Based Decision Making
The University of Notre Dame recently announced a $100 million commitment to a Poverty Initiative that will lead in the study of the root causes of poverty and advance evidence-based practices that have been shown to alleviate poverty in the United States and abroad. Poverty and the opioid epidemic are intimately connected, and the University’s work on evidence-based practices will directly serve the National Opioids Settlement and the victims it is meant to help. Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) and Lucy Institute for Data and Society are leading national efforts to understand the opioid crisis and house the opioid litigation data. The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins’ nationally recognized Principles for the Use of Funds From the Opioid Litigation identifies using evidence to guide spending as one of its five guiding principles. Notre Dame aims to utilize opioid litigation data to produce research that advances the understanding of the impact of the opioid epidemic across the country and how to best implement opioid abatement programs.
Attorney and University of Notre Dame alumnus Paul Farrell is a longtime leader in the fight against the opioid epidemic, which has hit his home state of West Virginia particularly hard. Farrell spearheaded litigation that resulted in a recent $400 million settlement for all of West Virginia’s counties and cities, building a coalition of communities in desperate need of addiction treatment and recovery services. Aware of Notre Dame’s expertise in evidence-based poverty solutions, he approached the University to act as a convener for this important conversation to ensure hard-fought settlement funds will best serve the people and communities who need them most. Having been called upon to act as a convener, the University of Notre Dame endeavors to use its well of academic expertise and scholarship to fulfill its mission of being a force for good, especially to address this ongoing epidemic.
The Summit
The University of Notre Dame will bring together leaders from across campus, including James X. Sullivan, Professor of Economics and Director of the Poverty Initiative, and William Evans, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics and co-founder of the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities, to run workshops on how evidence-based practices can be used to evaluate distribution processes, discuss ways to design, pilot, and test interventions prior to scaling them up, and how data can be used to track and evaluate all aspects of these processes. The ultimate goal is to ensure that the National Opioids Settlement best helps those victims it is meant to serve.