
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin on Friday announced that his office had delivered $20 million in settlement funds to Arkansas Children’s Hospital to establish the National Center for Opioid Research & Clinical Effectiveness (NCOR).
The funds are a portion of a $50 million pledge by Griffin’s office to help establish the center. Since announcing the pledge in November 2023, the attorney general’s office has delivered $30 million of the pledge.
Arkansas Children’s is looking to raise $70 million in total to establish the first-of-its-kind center. The facility will include a brain imaging center and a clinical research unit, among other features at its 45,000-SF facility in Little Rock. Research and training at NCOR will be shared at ACH regional locations and with other medical experts around the country.
According to Arkansas Children’s, opioids pose threats to child health across the U.S. and were recently discovered to be the leading cause of fatal poisoning in children 5 years old and younger.
In a news release, Griffin said the center will be a “game changer” for children in Arkansas and across the nation.
“The work of NCOR will lead to breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of unborn babies, newborns, developing children, and teenagers who are impacted by opioid addiction,” Griffin said. “This is an effective use of Arkansas’s opioid settlement funds because it is a long-term investment in work that will continue for decades to come — long after opioid settlement funds are gone.”
The money is a portion of $50 billion in settlement funds that pharmaceutical companies agreed to pay to state and local governments over the next two decades.
Griffin has also directed settlement funds to the state’s specialty courts, which provide opportunities for certain offenders, typically those who have struggled with substance abuse, to get treatment and job training.
More settlement funds are on the way. Griffin in November announced that Arkansas will receive up to $13.5 million as its share of a $1.37 billion settlement between Kroger and 30 states over the grocery and pharmacy chain’s role in the opioid crisis.