From Dollars to Recovery: Using Opioid Settlement Funds to Build Community-Driven Solutions That Center Lived Experience

Session Description: State and local governments are receiving tens of billions of dollars in opioid settlement funds intended to address the overdose crisis and repair harms caused by opioid misuse. Yet a central question remains: how can this historic funding build sustainable, community-driven recovery ecosystems-and are people with lived and living experience shaping those decisions? This session will examine what national settlement tracking data reveal about recovery investments, transparency gaps, and opportunities to fund recovery-ready infrastructure across housing, employment, treatment, peer services, transportation, legal supports, family supports, and local governance. Presenters will connect national data from the opioid settlement tracking project led by KFF Health News in partnership with Shatterproof and Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative with practical models from states and communities that are advancing recovery in system-wide ways. The discussion will highlight recovery-ready community approaches, braided funding strategies, Recovery-Oriented Systems of Care, strong government-community partnerships, and the emerging National Framework for Recovery, a new federal-state-local effort led by Georgetown University, Shatterproof, Johns Hopkins, and Black Faces Black Voices to define, support, and scale recovery ecosystems across the country. Panelists will also discuss how people with lived and living experience can be meaningfully included in advisory bodies, grantmaking, implementation, and accountability efforts. Participants will leave with concrete models, tools, and policy ideas for assessing whether settlement investments are transparent, equitable, recovery-centered, and adaptable across political and geographic contexts.