Diversion and Treatment Implementation

The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) Program is the first major federal substance use disorder treatment and recovery legislation in 40 years and the most comprehensive effort to address the opioid epidemic. CARA establishes a comprehensive, coordinated, and balanced strategy through enhanced grant programs that expand prevention and education efforts while also promoting treatment and recovery. The Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based program was developed as part of the CARA legislation signed into law on July 22, 2016.

The Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based Program aims to reduce opioid abuse and the number of overdose fatalities, as well as to mitigate the impacts on crime victims. The program also supports the implementation, enhancement, and proactive use of prescription drug monitoring programs to support clinical decision making and prevent the abuse and diversion of controlled substances.

The statewide planning, coordination, and implementation projects are designed to support initiatives jointly planned and implemented by the State Administering Agency (SAA) responsible for directing criminal justice planning and the Single State Agency (SSA) for Substance Abuse Services. This category contains two subcategories of funding. Subcategory 4a funds the development of a coordinated plan between the SAA and SSA to assist localities in engaging and retaining offenders who abuse illicit or prescription opioids in treatment and recovery services; increase the use of diversion; and/or reduce the incidence of overdose death. Subcategory 4b enables the awardee to provide financial support to localities or a region to implement the strategies in the plan developed as part of subcategory 4a.

Alabama’s Department of Mental Health, in partnership with the Alabama Bureau of Justice Assistance, a division of the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, will pilot an evidence based model(s) of diversion from incarceration for opioid addicted individuals interacting with the criminal justice system and to study the impact/outcomes of such interventions, spreading successful intervention statewide at the completion of the project period, to reduce incarceration, recidivism, morbidity and mortality for adults with an OUD who are cycling through the criminal justice system.

CA/NCF