Luzerne County Council is set to vote Monday on three proposed opioid settlement fund earmarks totaling $700,760.
The requests were advanced to council by the county’s Commission on Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement, which was created to make recommendations on how to spend funds received from the state’s settlement against opioid manufacturers and wholesale distributors.
Council has earmarked approximately $5.5 million in opioid settlement funds since 2023 for a range of eligible internal and outside projects, including programs that provide medication-assisted treatment at the prison, warm hand-off and recovery specialist services, recovery housing, and treatment and prevention education.
Psychiatric hospital
The largest proposed allocation on Monday’s agenda is $500,000 for Wyoming Valley Behavioral Health, an inpatient psychiatric hospital on Wyoming Avenue in Kingston that treats patients with serious mental illnesses and co-occurring substance use disorders.
Since its November 2023 opening, the facility has served hundreds of county residents in psychiatric crisis, with referrals from hospitals, crisis units, and community organizations, its funding submission said.
The county earmark would fund expansion and enhancement of its adult inpatient program to “meet the rising demand for crisis-level psychiatric and opioid use disorder care” in the county, it said.
“At the heart of this expansion is the December 2025 onboarding of a full-time salaried psychiatrist, which will increase daily operational capacity from 56 beds to 80-plus beds immediately, with future growth to over 100 beds,” it said.
The expansion will “alleviate significant pressure” on hospital emergency departments and emergency responders by increasing the number of safe inpatient psychiatric treatment beds, it said.
After the initial launch, the program is designed to be permanently self-sustaining through insurance reimbursements and other post-grant hospital revenue, it said.
Wyoming Valley Behavioral Health employs a “full interdisciplinary team” that includes physicians, nurses, licensed therapists, case managers, mental health technicians, and certified recovery specialists, it said.
Chiropractic services
Another allocation — $131,360 — would cover chiropractic services intended to prevent acute and chronic pain sufferers from turning to addictive opioid medication.
Dr. Jeff Lewis, the owner of Lewis Chiropractic in Hanover Township, submitted the application to provide chiropractic treatment to those without insurance or with insurance that does not cover the service. He is calling the new program the “Alternatives to Opioid Medication in Chiropractic (ATOMIC) Initiative.”
The $131,360 would cover a two-year period and assist both existing patients and new ones reached through an accompanying marketing campaign about the program, Lewis told council.
Several council members raised questions and concerns about the proposal during the last work session, in part because it differs from the types of programs and services funded in the past.
Prevention program
In the final request up for consideration Monday, Pathway to Recovery Counseling and Educational Services is seeking $69,400 to cover costs associated with providing its eight-month Too Good for Drugs prevention program in three school districts — sixth through eighth grades at Hazleton Area; sixth grade at Crestwood; and sixth through twelfth grades at Hanover Area.
This program aims to make students more resilient by teaching them how to be “socially competent and autonomous problem solvers” and includes instruction on effective communication and identifying and managing emotions, it said.
Formerly Serento Gardens, the nonprofit Pathway To Recovery has been providing services for more than four decades and has a team of prevention specialists trained in evidence-based curriculum, it said.
Council’s Monday meeting starts at 6 p.m. in the county courthouse on River Street in Wilkes-Barre. Instructions for the remote attendance option will be posted on council’s public meetings section at luzernecounty.org.
The county is expected to receive approximately $30 million over 18 years from the state’s opioid settlement, officials have said.
Unlike typical funding requests that come with firm deadlines, the commission is accepting applications on a rolling basis because the funding is ongoing over multiple years.
Applications and information about eligible uses for the settlement funds are posted on the commission’s section at luzernecounty.org.