WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) announced that the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Office of Justice Programs (OJP) has awarded the Ohio State Board of Pharmacy a $1,648,455 grant through the Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP). This grant will help fund the Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System (OARRS) to help prevent the misuse of controlled substance medications.
“In Ohio, where the ongoing pandemic has only exacerbated the addiction crisis, we need to make sure that state agencies have the resources they need to curtail and address the misuse of controlled substances,” said Brown.
OARRS was created to detect the diversion, abuse, and misuse of controlled substances. These funds will be used to promote the integration of OARRS into electronic medical records and pharmacy dispensing systems and target rural areas of the state that have integration rates below the current county average.
The Harold Rogers PDMP enhances the capacity of regulatory and law enforcement agencies and public health officials to collect and analyze controlled substance prescription data and other scheduled chemical products through a centralized database administered by an authorized agency. The goal is to support state and local governments in detecting and preventing the diversion and abuse of pharmaceutically controlled substances such as opioids and other prescription drugs.
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