The Big Story 

The Trump administration is restoring full funding for a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program that provides grants to reduce and track drug overdoses, including fentanyl.

(John Bazemore, Associated Press file)

Grant recipients had been sounding the alarm after the administration held up money that had already been appropriated to the CDC’s Overdose Data to Action (OD2A) program. Advocacy groups on Tuesday said they had been informed the program will be fully funded. 
Raynard Washington, health director of Mecklenburg County in North Carolina, told reporters on Monday that the program had previously only been guaranteed half its $280 million apportionment. That funding is now going to be distributed, though grantees had not yet been told. 
“Every delay, every spending freeze — these translate to lost time and lives,” Sharon Gilmartin, director of the Safe States Alliance, a public health advocacy group, told reporters Monday. 
“There has been a lack of transparency in the [funding] process,” Gilmartin told The Hill Tuesday, “The people that suffer are the communities and the people doing the work.” 
CDC’s OD2A cooperative agreement provides funding to 90 health departments.
NPR first reported last month that the administration had delayed and might cancel about $140 million of the program’s grants. It was also first to report on the restoration of funding.  
The Office of Management and Budget told The Hill it was never withholding funding, and CDC had the authority to release the funds. 

Welcome to The Hill’s Health Care newsletter, we’re Nathaniel Weixel, Joseph Choi and Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech — every week we follow the latest moves on how Washington impacts your health.

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