Attorney General Kris Kobach | Attorney General Kris Kobach Official website

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach announced a list of 32 Kansas organizations that will receive more than $8.5 million in grant awards from the Kansas Fights Addiction Grant Review Board. The grants mark the third round of funding from the board and will support substance use disorder services across the state. Funding for the grants comes from money recovered by the Attorney General's Office through opioid legal settlements. The grant awards prioritized strategies related to treatment, recovery, harm reduction and linking people to support services and care. The Kansas Prescription Drug and Opioid Advisory Committee established those priorities in its 2023-2027 state strategic plan. "Following feedback from the first year of grant making, the Kansas Fights Addiction Grant Review Board refined its RFP process to further target immediate needs experienced across the state. The grant awards announced today go to organizations working across the state to abate the crisis through improving access to treatment programs, establishing new recovery and sober living homes and spaces, expanding access to harm reduction tools like test strips and overdose reversal drugs, and growing our capacity to prevent substance use disorder. The Kansas Fights Addiction Grant Review Board remains committed to responsive, data driven, and innovative approaches to fighting substance use disorder throughout Kansas," Assistant Attorney General Christopher Teters said. The KFA board originally had planned not to exceed $6 million in funding for this third grant cycle, but after reviewing the 74 applications and seeing the quality of projects proposed, the board agreed to provide more than $2.5 million in additional funding. In doing so, the board approved grants to the following organizations:

These grants will make an additional 10,000 kits of naloxone, a medication used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids. The grants will also make approximately 12,000 fentanyl test strips available to Kansans struggling with substance use disorder.

In 2022, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 497 Kansas residents died from opioid overdose.The Kansas Fights Addiction Act was enacted in 2021 by the Kansas Legislature and authorized creation of the KFA board. Sunflower Foundation, a statewide health philanthropy based in Topeka, serves as the administrator for the grant program. In its first two rounds of funding in 2023, the KFA board awarded more than $10 million in support of 59 projects across the state aimed at providing SUD services. Including the latest round of funding, the KFA board has awarded more than $18.5 million. A fourth round of KFA grant awards targeting strategies related to prevention, providers and health systems, and public safety and first responders will be announced in January. The 2024 KFA grant project summary report, expected to be available on Sunflower Foundation's KFA webpage in early 2025, will include more information about all the grant recipients and the scopes of their projects. An estimated impact report for all the projects, showing how and where the funds are being used across Kansas, also will be available on the Sunflower KFA web page in early 2025.