ATLANTA, Ga. — The state trust that hands out Georgia’s opioid settlement money is paying for programs that steer pregnant women with addiction away from prison and into treatment, part of more than $30 million in new state grants.
Motherhood Beyond Bars, a nonprofit that works with pregnant women behind bars and their newborns, is growing its jail program on grants from the Georgia Opioid Crisis Abatement Trust, which has backed the group for roughly two years, and the program now covers rural jails along with the big metro lockups of Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, Rockdale and Douglas. This year’s grant paid for a manager to lead the jail expansion and a childbirth educator.
The program steps in before a woman is sentenced and makes the case for treatment over a prison term. Georgia does not keep a count of pregnant women entering its jails, so the group’s own tracking is offering one of the first looks at those numbers. Its leaders estimate about 80% of women behind bars are mothers.
The trust was set up in 2022 to handle up to $1.3 billion from several national opioid settlements, paid out over 18 years. Those dollars come from the companies, not from taxpayers. Georgia’s share of the 2022 deal with the three big drug distributors and Johnson & Johnson alone is about $636 million.
The trust announced its 2026 awards on Nov. 3: $30.3 million spread across 88 projects. Nineteen statewide projects split about $11.7 million, and 69 regional projects shared about $18.7 million. Demand far outran the money. Regional applicants alone sought more than $86 million.
Kevin Tanner, the state behavioral health commissioner who serves as trustee and has the final word on awards, said the settlement funds must be spent in ways that are open and produce measurable results. The trust previously awarded $70.3 million to 127 projects in 2024 and about $42.5 million to 109 projects in 2025, and it is working with the University of Georgia’s David Ralston Institute to measure how funded programs perform.
Filed under: Atlanta GA Health News
