Pilot program to guide people into drug treatment gets underway with opioid settlement funds.

Since 2022, the County of Monterey has received nearly $3 million in funds stemming from several opioid settlement lawsuits, with a total of $13 million expected over the next 20 years. After a slow start in distributing funds to agencies and nonprofits to fight opioid use and addiction in the community, county officials are finally designating cash to several programs, totaling over $1.56 million.

The highest award thus far is to nonprofit Central Coast Overdose Prevention for $627,609, to create a pilot mobile outreach program called the Substance Use Response Team. It’s designed to send doctors, peer counselors and others into encampments aimed at preventing overdoses and providing recovery support.

The program is being led by CCODP’s president, Dr. Reb Close, who’s been on the forefront of the fight against opioids through her work as an emergency room physician at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, Montage’s Prescribe Safe program and street medicine programs. For several years Close and partners in treatment and law enforcement had been interested in creating the mobile outreach team, modeled after a successful Ohio program.

The County agreed to pay for the pilot through July with a focus on South County cities. CCODP purchased a truck and supplies, and compensates doctors who spend one day a week in the field. They launched in Soledad a few months ago, adding King City in December and Greenfield in mid-January.

Close says she and the peer counselors have already established a connection with people living by the Salinas River in Soledad, bringing them socks, snacks and other items, many donated. They offer supplies to those they know recently overdosed and guide them, if they ask, to medical treatment through Clinica de Salud’s mobile clinic.

Close is hopeful the program will prove itself and be extended beyond July. “We’re figuring out how best to serve each community while learning from other communities,” she says.