Amber Govan often can be found inside an unassuming building off 12th Street in Little Rock working with students during after-school programs or consulting federal agencies on community violence intervention through her nonprofit, Carter’s Crew.

helps teens in Central Arkansas who have been in the justice system or live in crime-heavy neighborhoods; it stems from Govan’s personal experience of being considered “at-risk” in her own life.

With $200,000 in settlement funds from the , the nonprofit will add opioid prevention education to its repertoire.

“We want to be a one-stop shop for everything that families need, as much as possible,” Govan said. “Part of our process is that families, not just the teens but the whole family, go through an intake [process] and identify areas they need assistance with. Substance abuse is a major one, right behind mental health.”

More than 108,000 people in the United States died of a drug overdose in 2023, according to preliminary data from the . The same data shows Arkansas had 572 drug overdose deaths in 2023, though the figure could change as the data is finalized.

Carter’s Crew will use the settlement funds to hire a peer recovery specialist, substance abuse educator and a case manager tasked with mitigating risk factors for misuse among teens. Staff will manage a program that will run four 12-week sessions annually, followed by nine months of follow-up for each participant, Govan said.

The program mimics a 12-step program and participants will be referred for outside assistance, such as inpatient services or medication management, when necessary, Govan said.

The settlement funds will also help staff develop an online opioid prevention curriculum, which Govan said will be the first of its kind in Arkansas for the demographic.

Content will include 30-minute videos led by other young people and quizzes to test participants’  knowledge along the way. They will receive certificates upon completion, and Govan said she’s currently working to have court judges accept them as part of the conditions for teens who are completing substance abuse programs.

The program is similar to one used for medical professionals at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Govan said.

Along with creating new programs, Govan also hopes the funding will help break down a stigma among different communities.

“In the Black community, people are afraid to bring up the topic of, ‘I’m struggling with being addicted to prescription pills,’ or whatever it may be,” Govan said. “For us…we want families to understand that there are more people out there who are like you, who need this assistance as well. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just something we need to provide services for.”

Breaking down that stigma will hopefully help people feel more comfortable self identifying and letting any agency or healthcare provider know they need help, Govan said.

Available funding

The funding for Carter’s Crew is part of $26 billion in opioid settlement funds to be distributed nationwide. Of that total, Arkansas is set to receive $216 million over 18 years.

The Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership was created in 2022 using city and county settlement funds. The initiative works to distribute funds to projects aimed at abating the opioid epidemic through prevention, treatment and recovery.

Kirk Lane, director of the initiative, said staff look for several features of a project when considering funding, including heart, innovation, location and prevention efforts. For Carter’s Crew, Lane said he was intrigued by the nonprofit receiving referrals from the juvenile courts.

“We look for the heart first,” he said. “If people are looking at the money as money, that’s not the direction we’re wanting to go.”

Every Arkansas county has at least one active program funded by the Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership, according . The announcement from Carter’s Crew increased the funded projects in Pulaski County to nine, joining the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office, the Crisis Stabilization Unit at UAMS, the Natural State Recovery Center and others.

“[Carter’s Crew] was one of the ones that we weeded through,” Lane said. “They were providing something different that the state was doing, was in a county that had a tremendous overdose situation and it was empowering young people that came from strong problem areas.”

Meeting the needs in every Arkansas county is one of Lane’s goals, and he said funding a project in a county that has fewer active programs may be prioritized if it has met the requirements.

Funding opportunities are ongoing, and the Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership doesn’t have a deadline for organizations to submit applications. Funding proposals must follow a list of , including evidence-based strategies to abate the opioid epidemic and signatures from the county judge and mayor where the program will take place.

Pulaski County Judge Barry Hyde and Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. pledged their support for Carter’s Crew.

After an organization has been awarded funding, the Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership conducts regular check-ins over the course of five years to ensure the goals are being met. The initiative collects quarterly data specific to the milestones of each program and completes an annual review.

If money was distributed to an organization and not used toward abating the opioid crisis, that amount is returned to the Arkansas Opioid Recovery Partnership. So far, approximately $1 million has been returned, Lane said.

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These statistics illustrate the scope of the epidemic, but they don’t capture the first-hand experiences of the real people — friends, relatives, neighbors and crucially, children — who bear the weight of this crisis. They don’t capture what it’s like for a student to lose a parent, how that grief affects the child’s academic performance and ability to focus in school or how teachers support that student’s emotional health. As vice president of policy and advocacy for a leading dedicated to children’s well-being, I know how crucial it is for policymakers to understand that, in addition to being a health crisis, the opioid epidemic is also a social and emotional crisis that affects kids across the country. 

More than have been filed against pharmaceutical companies and distributors for their role in the opioid epidemic, yielding totaling $50 billion and counting. The first payments from suits against Walgreens, CVS, Walmart, Teva and Allergan will start to roll out to states as . 

How that money will be used is unclear. States receiving settlement dollars are required to allocate of the funds to opioid abuse remediation, but it’s up to lawmakers to determine what measures to invest in. This presents a novel opportunity for states to help lessen to children’s lives associated with the epidemic, like the loss of a parent. But it also creates an opportunity to help stop the crisis in its tracks by funding education programs systems like research-based curricula that teach social-emotional life skills, which have been shown to such as substance abuse and in adolescence and adulthood.

Recently, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health partnered with a coalition of organizations — including physicians and specialists in addiction medicine, recovery, treatment and harm reduction — to create for using funds from the opioid litigation settlements. , “Invest in Youth Prevention,” highlights evidence-based social-emotional life skills programs as a key strategy to counter many of the .

Those risk factors include family history, mental or behavioral conditions, a history of trauma and feelings of social isolation or rejection. While nothing can fully eliminate these or other environmental risk factors, life skills programs are among the best solutions available to empower young people who face these challenges.

A United Nations report echoes Johns Hopkins’ recommendations. The UN : Strengthening social-emotional skills is the most efficient drug prevention measure among children ages 6 to 11. The is clear that teaching kids the social-emotional skills they need to overcome challenges that could lead to opioid abuse in adulthood is as critical as providing substance abuse treatment and recovery services in affected communities. Simply put, life skills programs focus on that often drive young people toward drug abuse.

Giving kids the ability to manage emotions, develop healthy coping skills and solve problems in stressful situations can bolster their well-being by helping them develop a stronger sense of self, greater awareness of their social environment, increased capacity to manage strong emotions and an ability to communicate and connect with their peers, among other skills. that the more children and young people have these healthy social and emotional coping skills, the less likely they are to engage in risky behaviors such as substance abuse.

These skills are similar to those which often empower people in recovery from addiction: identifying emotional and environmental triggers that lead to drug abuse, fostering supportive communities and building positive, healthy behavior patterns. Given that begin in their teenage years, lawmakers in states receiving opioid settlement payouts need to prioritize substance abuse prevention in schools by using that money to provide districts with funding specifically to purchase research-based life skills programs.

Equipping future generations of children with the life skills needed to overcome the influences and effects of opioid abuse will save lives. While the settlements in these lawsuits are a sign of hope, ending the opioid crisis once and for all depends on state lawmakers’ willingness to invest in children’s well-being.