A team from West Virginia University will be paid at least $1.5 million by the West Virginia First Foundation to perform a statewide needs assessment survey that will help the nonprofit decide how to allocate future grant money.
The needs assessment survey will take at least 18 months to complete, according to a Monday news release from the First Foundation. The initiative will be led by WVU’s Health Affairs Institute, the Data Driven WV initiative and the Institute for Policy Initiatives and Public Affairs.
The First Foundation board of directors first announced that WVU was selected to perform the needs assessment survey at its quarterly board meeting last Thursday. Leaders at the nonprofit — which was created in 2023 to distribute the state’s share of opioid settlement dollars — said WVU was selected through a “rigorous” review process. More than 20 proposals were submitted from organizations across the country to do the work.
The First Foundation posted a request for proposals in March 2025 for the statewide needs assessment survey. Responses to the RFP from interested organizations were due last April.
According to Monday’s news release, the needs assessment done by the WVU team will rely heavily on “data-driven methodologies.” Data will be used to “analyze the burden of addiction, evaluate existing services and funding sources, identify gaps in treatment and prevention and develop a public-facing dashboard for real-time insights.”
The team will be tasked with creating a “common metric” to measure how addiction affects communities at both the state and local levels. It will also map all current funding sources and services to “ensure equitable distribution” of dollars and help to create a “statewide interoperable network.”
The public dashboard and results of the statewide needs assessment survey will be released upon completion, per the news release.
Leaders at the First Foundation have emphasized the need for a statewide survey since the nonprofit’s inception. Having that assessment, they’ve said, will help ensure that the money they give is going to areas and services that need it most and that can make the most impact in confronting West Virginia’s ongoing drug and overdose epidemic.
To date, the First Foundation has distributed nearly $40 million in grant funds. On Thursday, the board announced that its next grant cycle — dubbed the “Community Catalyst Grant Cycle” — will open to applications in June. Details for what specific services will be targeted will be released at a later date.
This article originally appeared on West Virginia Watch.
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