STEUBENVILLE — By virtue of a new grant, the Jefferson County General Health District will further its efforts to fight addiction in the community by delivering opioid prevention education to Jefferson County schools next academic year.

The health department announced Wednesday it had received $187,951 from the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, which is tasked with distributing 55 percent of the settlement funds awarded to Ohio from the pharmaceutical industry due to its role in the national opioid epidemic. Grants support local addiction prevention efforts and invest in their long-term application.

With its grant, the health department will train its staff to teach a curriculum entitled “Empower Youth: Building Resilience Against Opioid Temptations through PreVenture” during a two-year cycle. Targeting adolescents, the program seeks to impart skills and promote social norms that serve as a barrier between youths and harmful substances.

The health department intends to provide the program to all Jefferson County middle and high school students between the ages of 12 and 17.

“The JCGHD is eager to offer the PreVenture program to the youth of Jefferson County,” Health Commissioner Andrew Henry said. “This is a tremendous opportunity to bring our passion for addiction prevention and community education together for the young people of Jefferson County.”

Contacted Wednesday, Henry said the curriculum’s content will be tailored to students’ age group. The curriculum will be broken into two 90-minute sessions presented within the same school year. During the program’s second year, students will receive education that builds on the previous year.

“The goal is building resilience against opioid temptations to reduce conduct problems and risky behaviors among youth,” Henry said. “Really, you’re trying to educate the child on the whole spectrum of health. It could be everything from STIs to transmission of infectious diseases. The ultimate goal is to improve the substance use aspect of it.”

According to its website, PreVenture identifies itself as an “evidence-based prevention program that uses brief, personality-focused workshops to promote mental health and delay substance use among youth.

“The program aims to equip young people with self-efficacy and cognitive behavioral skills to help them cope with the numerous developmental challenges that many adolescents face, such as academic stress, peer pressure, interpersonal conflict and identity development. PreVenture recognizes the importance of individual differences in how people interpret and cope with different types of challenges in life.”

Students will be instructed on how to manage themselves without turning to addictive behaviors, Henry said, adding, “You want to delay any sort of addictive behaviors as long as you can, first and foremost, but then also provide the actual, real, hands-on life skills of how to be productive members of society.”

This program will expand on the health department’s existing youth-centered efforts to combat opioid addiction in the community, such as participating in the Jefferson County Juvenile Task Force and Jefferson County United Prevention Partnership. Conducting public health outreach at local schools is nothing new to the department’s staff, Henry noted.

Even more proximate to the opioid epidemic, the health department is a supplier of the opioid overdose-reversing drug naloxone through the Ohio Department of Health’s Project DAWN, and it has facilitated the placement of several naloxone distribution boxes within the county for public use.

The health department’s grant is part of the inaugural round of funding by the OneOhio Recovery Foundation, a private and nonprofit institution created under the direction of Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and other state and regional leaders. Approximately $51 million will be made available for prevention, recovery and treatment programs across the state’s 19 OneOhio regions, of which the health department occupies Region 11.

“We’re pleased to partner with the Jefferson County General Health District to support their efforts to save lives, rebuild families affected by addiction and foster strong and resilient places to live,” said Alisha Nelson, executive director of the OneOhio Recovery Foundation.

Henry commended the health department’s administrative and nursing teams for collaborating to submit a “strong application” for an “extremely competitive” grant program. The health department’s releases states that more than $500 million in funding requests were submitted to the 2024 Regional Grant application.

Applications to the foundation’s first grant cycle were evaluated by the OneOhio Regional Board, the OneOhio Expert Panel and the foundation’s 29-member board of directors.

According to its website, the OneOhio Recovery Foundation is “committed to ensuring all Foundation funding awards support evidence-based, forward-looking strategies for the purposes of prevention, treatment, recovery and abatement of substance use and co-occurring disorders.”

While 55 percent of Ohio’s funds are being distributed to local initiatives, another 15 percent will go to the state itself and another 30 percent will go directly to Ohio governments.