Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) Announces $4.8 Million in New Grants to Support Innovative Solutions to the Opioid and Overdose Crisis

New York, Feb. 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE), a private 501(c)(3) national grant-making foundation focused on ending the nation’s opioid crisis, is announcing 11 new grants totaling $4.8 million to support innovative solutions to some of the opioid crisis’ most challenging problems.

“We are launching our Innovation Program to generate and support new approaches to some of the long-standing barriers to making real progress in addressing the opioid crisis – how to better tackle stigma, generate more timely and actionable data, and help for people transitioning from treatment to long-term recovery,” says FORE President Dr. Karen A. Scott. “These projects have great potential to give us exciting new tools and lessons that will help communities around the country respond to the crisis more effectively, inform future policy decisions, and ultimately save lives.”

“FORE prioritizes projects that reach high-risk populations with patient-centered solutions and a commitment to health equity,” says Dr. Andrea Barthwell, Chair of FORE’s Board of Directors. “Our new Innovation Program continues to show our commitment to funding diverse projects that contribute solutions to the crisis at national, state, and community levels.”

FORE’s Innovation Program is funding projects that combine approaches from diverse fields and engage multi-disciplinary teams to encourage work on some of the crisis’ most intractable challenges:

1. Professional Education and Training to Address Stigma. While there is an increase in available professional education on addiction and recovery among healthcare, education, legal, and criminal justice professionals, these subjects are still not routinely taught. Projects in this focus area include innovative approaches to educating professionals and addressing stigma.
2. Timely and Actionable Data. New ways of generating real-time and actionable data are sorely needed for all levels of government to appropriately respond to and prevent overdoses, including through integrating new and untapped data sources across different sectors for a more in-depth understanding of the crisis.
3. Supporting the Transition from Treatment to Recovery. In addition to access to treatment, the need is great to aid highly vulnerable patients transitioning from treatment to long-term recovery, including through novel uses of emerging technologies. 

New Grantees and Projects (Two Year Grants)

Professional Education and Training to Address Stigma

• Agency for Substance Abuse Prevention (Oxford, Alabama)
  Faith-Based Support Specialist Training
  Principal Investigator: Seyram Selase, ICPS, CPM
  $164,470

• Friends Research Institute Inc. (Baltimore, Maryland)
  Doing Right at Birth: Reducing Stigma and Improving Recovery through Professional Education and Around Child Welfare Reporting
  Principal Investigators: Mishka Terplan, MD, MPH and Sarah Roberts, DrPH
  $596,921

• Montefiore Medical Center (Bronx, New York)
  Advancing Equity in Urine Drug Testing in Primary Care-Based Buprenorphine Treatment
  Principal Investigator: Mariya Masyukova, MD, MS
  $298,699 

• University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Foundation Inc. (North Dartmouth, Massachusetts)
  Novel Organizational Simulation Training to Improve Graduate’s Mastery & Attitudes (NO STIGMA)
  Principal Investigators: Mary McCurry, PhD, Monika Schuler, PhD, and Jennifer Viveiros, PhD
  $591,485 

• Weill Cornell Medicine (New York, NY)
  Improving Physicians’ Self-Awareness and Attitudes Towards Patients with Substance Use Disorders via a Role-Playing Virtual Tool
  Principal Investigator: Jonathan Avery, MD
  $199,516 

Timely and Actionable Data

• Brown University (Providence, Rhode Island)
  Understanding Drug Use Within a Rapidly Changing Supply: An Ethnographic and Toxicologic Investigation to Improve Overdose Prevention and Supply Surveillance Communication
  Principal Investigators: Alexandra Collins, PhD and Rachel Wightman, MD
  $564,319 

• Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
  Precision Epidemiology and the Opioid Crisis: Using Next-Generation Geospatial Analyses to Guide Community-Level Responses in Diverse and Segregated Metropolitan Regions
  Principal Investigators: John Mantsch, PhD, Rina Ghose, PhD, and Peter Brunzelle
  $600,000 

• Temple University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
  Stop Overdose Deaths: Monitoring Comprehensiveness of State Policy to Prevent Overdose Deaths
  Principal Investigators: Scott Burris, JD, and Nicolas Terry, LLM
  $600,000 

• Tufts University School of Medicine (Boston, Massachusetts)
  Syndromic Surveillance of the Opioid Crisis in Lowell, Massachusetts: Data to Action and Evaluation
  Principal Investigators: Shikhar Shrestha, PhD, Thomas Stopka, PhD, and Jennifer Pustz, PhD
  $475,521 

• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
  Randomized Trial and Analytic Chemistry Innovations to Optimize Drug Alerts
  Principal Investigator: Nabarun Dasgupta, PhD
  $599,488 

Supporting the Transition from Treatment to Recovery 

• New York State Psychiatric Institute / Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, Inc. (New York, New York)
  Health Technology Applications to Support the Integration of Care for Individuals with Substance Use Disorder
  Principal Investigator: Harold Pincus, MD
  $94,595 

ABOUT FORE:
The Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) was founded in 2018 as a private 501(c)(3) national, grant-making foundation focused on addressing the nation’s opioid crisis. FORE is committed to funding a diversity of projects contributing solutions to the crisis at national, state, and community levels. FORE’s mission is to support partners advancing patient-centered, innovative, evidence-based solutions impacting people experiencing opioid use disorder, their families, and their communities. Through convening, grantmaking and developing informational resources, FORE seeks to bring about long-term change. To date, FORE has awarded 55 grants totaling $17.9 million.

Myrna Manners
Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts 
718-986-7255
[email protected]