Aurora is looking at options for using opioid abatement settlement funds for overdose intervention at the Regional Navigation Campus, which will officially open later this year.

City staff members presented recommendations to the Aurora City Council on Monday for the use of the money, which comes from lawsuits the Colorado Department of Law wins against pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors. 

The settlement money from the lawsuits is then distributed across the state for addiction treatment, recovery and prevention programs. 

Calli Tucker, a crisis intervention program administrator for the city, presented several recommendations for Aurora’s use of the money, saying her team will look deeper into each option with the council’s permission. 

Currently, Aurora has almost $1.8 million in opioid settlement funds, with almost $250,000 already approved for use to purchase three vans for the city’s homeless navigation campus. The vans would make stops at treatment facilities. 

The city intersects with three regional opioid abatement council regions, including Arapahoe, Adams and Douglas counties. Each of the regional councils has an Aurora council representative and the city gets a small portion of each of the counties’ settlement allotments, including 3.8% of any settlement funds for Arapahoe County, 0.4% of settlement funds for Adams County and 0.1% from settlement funds for Douglas County. 

Settlement funds will continue to come in for the next 16 years, according to Tucker, with an estimated $3.4 million coming to Aurora in that time period. 

The regional opioid abatement councils that Aurora falls within focus specifically on withdrawal management, criminal justice-involved populations, youth and school-based programs and housing stability supportive services.

Based on regional data and the regional councils’ priorities for the money, Tucker’s team recommended Aurora use its allotment for including Medicaid billing consulting at the Regional Navigation Campus and public Narcan vending machines. 

Establishing Medicaid billing is a complicated process “best facilitated through a consultant,” Tucker said. Having a consultant at the navigation campus, which would cost about $125,000 from the opioid settlement funds, would help with the process, she said.

Additionally, Tucker’s team recommended implementing Narcan vending machines in public places, which would cost about $10,000 per machine.

There are two such vending machines locally already, one at the Addiction Research and Treatment Services Potomac Street Center and a recently added one at the Denver Health Hospital campus.

At the Denver Health location, the vending machine distributes packages containing two doses of naloxone at no cost. Personal hygiene kits are also available, according to a Denver Health news release. 

According to a CNN analysis of state health departments, at least 33 states have naloxone vending machines. Chicago, New York and Detroit are among cities across the country who have implemented such vending machines. 

Emma Knight, Aurora’s homeless programs manager, said their team has not designated locations for the vending machines yet, but they would likely look at heat maps and put them in the places with the most overdoses.

Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky expressed concern about the vending machines, saying she wants to make sure “we’re not promoting any sort of safe injection sites.” 

“For this, this teeters on that,” she said.

Mayor Mike Coffman shared the concern, saying he’s “all for” city staff, firefighters and police officers having Narcan to administer, but is “not sure about this vending machine concept.”

Councilmember Alison Coombs argued that the navigation campus has what the city refers to as a “low-barrier” shelter option, meaning people who are using drugs can still access it.

Coffman said he thinks the navigation campus staff should have access to Narcan, but that he doesn’t necessarily think the public should have access to it at the location. 

“This is about treating overdoses and potential overdoses,” she said. “If we’re saying people don’t need to have access to Narcan, we’re saying our low barrier shelter is a place where we’d rather have people die than be treated if they’re using, so we need to be really careful if we’re saying people shouldn’t have easy access to Narcan.”

Between 2023 and the end of April this year, police officers have administered 700 doses of Narcan in Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties, according to Tucker. Firefighters in these counties in the same time period have administered 1,295 doses of Narcan. 

In 2023, the three counties saw 442 non-fatal opioid overdose emergency room visits and 350 fatal overdose emergency room visits, Tucker said. 

She added that their research shows that more than 73% of overdose deaths in Colorado in 2023 had “at least one” opportunity for intervention. 

Tucker’s team will move forward with their recommendations for the use of the funds, presenting the recommendations to the council as they are developed before they are implemented.