Innovations in Opioid Settlement Fund Spending

Elizabeth Auch, PHN is the Countryside Public Health Administrator for Countryside Public Health. Liz has spent her career in local public health since 1993.  Liz directs a five-county fully integrated local public health organization in southwest rural Minnesota. She oversees a population of approximately 43,000 residents and 30 employees. Countryside Public Health has a five-county Community Health board comprised of County Commissioners and Lay-board members that meet monthly to set the course for our organization. 

Liz has a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of North Dakota. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of South Dakota in 2017. She currently serves as the Legislative Co-chair for the Local Public Health Association. She sits on various committees throughout her five counties and has been on SCHSAC work groups throughout the years.

Liz’s passion is public health, her girls, grandchildren and the farm in North Dakota. 

Dalton Barrett serves as the Opioid Settlement Coordinator for Edgecombe County, a rural, predominantly minority community in Eastern North Carolina. He leads the planning, budgeting, compliance, and long-term sustainability of opioid settlement–funded initiatives, with responsibility for expenditures, proposal review, outcome tracking, and required reporting. He approaches this work with a strong focus on compassion, dignity, and public understanding, viewing these as essential to effective use of public funds and meaningful community impact.

Alongside his administrative role, Dalton leads and works in the field with the Post Overdose Response Team. As a board-certified Community Paramedic, he has helped redesign services based on early barriers to care, using creativity and real-world experience to build mobile, low-barrier programs that are practical, evidence-based, and responsive to community needs. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Western Carolina University. 

Tracie M. Gardner is Executive Director of the National Black Harm Reduction Network and former Senior Vice President of Policy Advocacy at the Legal Action Center. For more than 30 years, she has worked across public health, policy, and nonprofit leadership, with a focus on substance use, the War on Drugs, and the impact of incarceration on Black communities. She is a nationally recognized expert on health equity and racial justice. In 2025, New York Attorney General Letitia James appointed her to the state’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Board, which guides recommendations on the use of opioid settlement dollars statewide. Tracie earned her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, which honored her with its Alumnae Association Achievement Award. Her proudest accomplishment is raising her two sons, Caleb and Elijah Wright. 

Alyssa Kitlas is the Opioid Settlement Program Manager for Wake County. In this role, she oversees the opioid settlement funds coming to Wake County which includes co-leading a county-wide coalition, managing the program budget and contracts, communicating regularly to key stakeholders, leading collaborative strategic planning, and evaluating funded interventions. Prior to coming to Wake County, she worked at the North Carolina Division of Public Health, Philadelphia Department of Public Health, NASTAD, and NACCHO. Alyssa received her Master of Public Health degree at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she was a Bloomberg American Health Fellow focused on Overdose and Addiction.

Aneri Pattani is a senior correspondent at KFF Health News, a national nonprofit outlet, for which she covers mental health, suicide, and substance use. She produces digital and audio stories and has been heard on NPR and Science Friday. Her multiyear series about how state and local governments are spending billions in opioid settlement funds made her a finalist for a Livingston Award and was featured on an episode of the late-night comedy show Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. Pattani was a 2019 recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism and now serves on the fellowship’s advisory board. While pursuing her master’s in public health at Johns Hopkins University, she co-authored a free online course to teach journalists how to responsibly cover suicide. 

Abigail Winiker, PhD, is an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Program Director for the Bloomberg Overdose Prevention Initiative. Her research focuses on evidence-based overdose prevention efforts, improved substance use treatment/recovery infrastructure, and drug decriminalization policy. As a member of the Overdose Prevention Initiative, she works to create and disseminate guidance on settlement fund spending to support evidence-based abatement efforts aligned with the Principles for the Use of Funds from the Opioid Litigation.

Regina LaBelle is a distinguished scholar and director of the Center on Addiction Policy at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center. She is also a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Health, where she directs the Master of Science in Addiction Policy and Practice program, a program she founded in 2021.  

Regina has a history of public service, including in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) under the Biden and Obama administrations. At ONDCP, Regina was appointed Acting Director in the first year of the Biden Administration. Under President Obama, Regina served as Chief of Staff at ONDCP where she managed the agency's response to the overdose epidemic and the implementation of the National Drug Control Strategy. Prior to her federal service, Regina was appointed Legal Counsel to the mayor of Seattle, a position she held for 8 years.   

Regina’s work has been published in the Journal of Opioid Management; Journal of Correctional Health Care/ Criminal Justice Review, and The Journal of Addiction Medicine.  She has testified before both Senate and House Committees in the US Congress and is widely quoted in major media outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.  Regina has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, the BBC, and CBS.  

Regina earned her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and B.A. magna cum laude from Boston College. She serves on the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health and previously served on the International Ethics Board for the World Anti-Doping Agency.