CLEVELAND — Governor Mike DeWine announced Monday that Alisha Nelson will take over as executive director of the OneOhio Foundation.
Nelson most recently served as director of Humana Healthy Horizons Ohio and previously was the first director of RecoveryOhio.
"We definitely have to get this money out to the local governments, but we're also being thoughtful about statewide efforts," she said. "We're also thinking about prevention and reducing stigma as it relates to this issue. And finally thinking about research and innovation. What does it take to see the vision of 2050 where we want to really see this issue abated and that no one else has to struggle with the loss of a loved one."
The OneOhio Foundation formed a little more than a year ago and recently converted to a private nonprofit. It has been tasked with handling and distributing much of the money received from lawsuit settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors.
It comes as a record-breaking 5,174 people died from unintentional overdose deaths in Ohio in 2021, according to data published by the Ohio Department of Health.
"[The opioid crisis is] worse than ever, and COVID-19 was gasoline on the fire," said Judge David Matia, a board member at the OneOhio Foundation.
Matia sees what works and what doesn’t from inside his drug court in Cuyahoga County.
But this board member knows what works in Cleveland may not work in rural communities. That’s why he told News 5 the OneOhio Foundation will support all sorts of ideas from different regions in the state, whether that's rehabilitation, access to transportation or other forms of support needed to survive.
"It’s a nice opportunity to advance on our thinking on this," Matia explained. "On the other hand, we're looking to fund evidence-based programs. This is not going to be cotton candy for people in recovery and acupuncture."
Matia told News 5 he hopes to see the board open up the grant submission process as soon as this fall and distribute the first round of funds as soon as the spring of 2024.
"We’re going to have a yearly distribution of funds, a yearly grant process," Matia said.
What has been spent so far?
Much of the money spent so far has gone toward building the infrastructure behind a nearly billion-dollar entity.
However, over the first year of its existence, the OneOhio Foundation faced lawsuits over transparency and making records public. It was told by the Ohio Supreme Court it had to comply and responded by putting an amendment in the Ohio budget turning itself into a private nonprofit.
"It was designed to be an innovative approach to help our state put this important mission above politics and free of bureaucracy," board chair Larry Kidd said during the foundation's July meeting.
Dennis Cauchon leads Harm Reduction Ohio, a statewide nonprofit working full-time to reduce overdose deaths in the state, and spearheaded the lawsuit against the OneOhio Foundation.
"They say they want to free themselves of politics, however, the board is all politicians," he said. "The money can be put to good use, and the impacted population needs to be welcomed to the table and have a voice at the table. It's their money. This money is literally paid as compensation for deaths, and the people who lost loved ones have no representation for how the money is spent."
"We know how many families have been impacted by this crisis to make sure that every dollar spent is made and done in a transparent manner," Nelson said during Monday's announcement.
The reason for the foundation’s nonprofit status, board members said to News 5, is to avoid what happened when the state settled with big tobacco companies in 1998.
Back then, legislators diverted much of those funds away from tobacco prevention and instead put them in the state’s general fund.
"When I got appointed to this, I thought I was going to have a front-row seat at the wasting of the opioid money like the tobacco money went," Matia said.
"While that money was spent for good purposes, it was really not spent to deal with the tobacco smoking problem," Governor DeWine said during Monday's event. "I do not want to make that mistake again."
"It’s important that this works the way it’s designed to work without state government coming in and taking that money back and others uses for it," Hochadel added.
Board member reflects on personal battle with opioids
Keith Hochadel, a Canton Township trustee who is also secretary of the executive committee at the OneOhio Foundation and represents Region 6 (Stark County), has made it his mission to help tackle opioid addiction in the community.
"In 1993, I hurt my back moving railroad ties," he said. "I had my own pharmacy, so I took a couple Vicodin, and I was off to the races."
It was an addiction that didn’t cost his life, but instead, his livelihood and his family’s love.
"In three short years, it took everything I had away from me," he said. "It took my family, my business and my lifelong career I wanted."
Going forward, Hochadel admits there's a lot to be done across the state to address opioid addiction, and he hopes this grant process will expose regions to new ideas that can be shared across the state.
"We're encouraging people to think outside the box," he said. "Let’s face it, what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working very well."
"I think we’re starting to recognize we have to do things differently, but we’re not quite doing things differently yet," Cauchon said.
To learn more about the OneOhio Foundation, click here.
Clay LePard is a special projects reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on Twitter @ClayLePard or on Facebook Clay LePard News 5.
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