|
HEALTH CARE BRIEFING: Opioid Grant Info Sought in HHS Dashboard
By Shira Stein, Alex Ruoff and Brandon Lee | October 11, 2019 06:02AM ET | Bloomberg Government
House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans are unhappy with an upcoming Health and Human Services dashboard that won't include information on how local communities can access future opioid grant funding.
Staff from both parties received a briefing from HHS officials yesterday after Republican leaders requested an update on the law's implementation, Shira Stein reports, citing two people who were present during the briefing.
The HHS is required to create this dashboard by a provision in the bipartisan SUPPORT Act (H.R. 6) that Congress passed almost one year ago. HHS officials said that they were aiming to roll out the dashboard at the end of the month, the people said. The dashboard will include updated statistics on opioid-related deaths and addiction, and up-to-date information about where grant funding has been allocated in the past.
However, the point of the dashboard was to provide resources and information for communities going forward, according to the people. Members had heard from their local mayors that they had no idea how to find grant funding or how to go about applying for it, and the bill was intended to fix that.
Staff in the room expressed concern that it took HHS a year to put together the dashboard and that they don't have concrete plans to update it with information about how to apply for grants and find future funding. The two people said HHS was not fully complying with the intent of the bill and that it sounded like they didn't understand the full scope of what members were looking for.
HHS didn't return a request for comment.
|