MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) — In July, Mobile city leaders approved a $154,000 consulting contract with The Helios Alliance to help them determine how to best spend $2.3 million in opioid settlement funds. The organization’s founder Rayford Etherton says they’re trying to get public engagement and are asking interested groups to fill out a form ahead of a community meeting September 4th. Etherton says they’re focused on opioid use prevention, treatment, survivor programs and communication coordination.
“The problem is big, and the funds are limited,” said Etherton. “What we’re hoping to do is to fill the gaps that are missing in Mobile right now as we try to deal with the opioid crisis. The recommendations will not be to supplant existing programs, it’ll be to complement those and to find new solutions.”
He says they will create a formal request for proposals or RFP that will open September 5th. Proposals will be due October 11th. Between October 15-22nd, they will be conducting interviews and making site visits. Etherton says by the end of the year, they’ll be making formal recommendations to the city council about how to spend the money.
“Our approach also allows us to be able to feed results in real time into the model, so that we can evaluate what’s working, what needs to be tweaked, things that need to be changed. So it’s an ever evolving process,” said Etherton.