By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
A new Wood County prevention program that targets school violence may become a victim of changes to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“Changes to the Department of Homeland Security are really shifting focus away from domestic terrorism and targeted violence,” Amanda Kern, executive director of Wood County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services, told the agency’s board on Monday. “We are trying to learn and help prevent school shootings and violence, so with that kind of language comes a lot of concerns about continued funding opportunities.”
A group that has been researching school shootings and violence may not be able to continue because of funding and staffing changes.
“There isn’t a current concern” about the recently added county system navigator position for targeted violence and terrorism prevention because the grant was already allocated, Kern said. “There are concerns about where’s the future going for the funding stream because it has paid for pretty much all the research that’s been done in this field, which is an emergent field of practice.”
Because the program directly is under the Homeland Security umbrella, the funding becomes “a moving target,” she said. “We’re hopeful that we will still have funding streams and support for the network of people we’ve built to continue doing this important work.”
Proposed funding cuts for Medicaid is another financial concern for the agency. With the U.S. Congress approval of the resolution to cut about $880 billion from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees health care spending in programs such as Medicaid, WCADAMHS is “keeping an eye on what the federal government is doing with that and how it will impact us,” she said.
The federal cuts most likely would eliminate the 90% funding that provided for the Medicaid expansion, which in Ohio covers about 770,000 Ohioans.
“We will drill down into that data a little more to know what impact that would have in Wood County,” Kern said.
Currently, local mental health and addiction service providers have encouraged the fee-for-service lines. If Medicaid funding is reduced, WCADAMHS may become the payer for those services.
“We don’t want to make the assumption that that is going to happen, but we have to be prepared for that,” she said, about possibly removing funding from providers to keep fee-for-service available to consumers. “As we go into allocations (for FY26), we are keeping this as a running problem that we could run into in the upcoming year.”
Board Chair Frank McLaughlin asked if there would be any future concerns for local diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives.
Kern doesn’t identify it as a local concern because WCADAMHS plans to continue to have a DEI plan as part of the strategic plan.
“From a larger macro perspective it becomes the concern that this is our population,” she said. “Individuals who have mental health diagnoses, individuals who are struggling with drug and alcohol use, folks who are served across every program we fund are considered diversity and inclusion.”
There are injunctions that have delayed some of the changes to the funding, but she assured the board, “We will continue advocating to represent the populations that we serve.”
