Overdose training around KC saves lives. Trump is eyeing big funding cuts
Ray Rath remembers the apprehension he felt the first time he spoke to a room of law enforcement officers as an instructor training first responders on how to respond to overdoses.
He’s spent several years in recovery from addiction after a life that often put him at odds with authority figures. Even now, the Lawrence resident sometimes gets nervous before he remembers, “I’m not that guy anymore.”
Rath and Matthew Cushman, a Raytown paramedic, travel the Kansas City region as a pair, holding trainings for cops, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and others on how to effectively respond to overdose calls.
Cushman speaks to audiences first responder to first responder, while Rath’s personal perspective helps shift attitudes toward those suffering from addiction.
They worry about what happens if the training comes to an end.
A draft budget proposal for the Department of Health and Human Services that’s circulated in recent weeks would cut a $56 million federal grant program that puts Rath, Cushman and other instructor pairs on the road to speak at fire and police stations across Missouri. President Donald Trump’s administration is eyeing the cuts even as overdose deaths are falling – a turnaround some experts attribute in part to better public education and prevention efforts.
“We all have our opinions on politics and I’m not going to get into mine. But what I would say is the people that are in charge of this funding should talk to people like me,” Rath said. “They should see what recovery is like firsthand. They should understand that the work we’re doing is not only saving lives, but it’s bettering our community.”
Rath and Cushman operate under a program called MO-CORPS – Missouri-Coordinating Overdose Response, Partnerships & Support – funded by the federal First Responder Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act grant.
MO-CORPS focuses on two main objectives: getting naloxone, which can reverse overdoses, into the hands of first responders and training first responders on drug trends in Missouri and overdose best practices.
Since October 2023, MO-CORPS reports it has distributed over 17,000 units of naloxone, often known by the brand name Narcan, and trained nearly 8,000 first responders in Missouri. In turn, first responders who have received naloxone from the program have reported responding to 711 overdose calls and successfully reversing an overdose nearly 90% of the time.
Cushman estimates he and Rath have themselves trained thousands of first responders, including “hundreds upon hundreds” of personnel at the Kansas City Fire Department. Over the roughly two years they’ve been instructors together, they’ve encountered a range of reactions and some surprising moments.
At a small volunteer fire department, Cushman recounted how a volunteer, breaking down during a training, shared that he was a recovering opioid user.
“You could have heard a pin drop,” Cushman said. “And it was the most, I mean, I want to say one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever seen and here I am in this place where we kind of sometimes think we’ll get some pushback a little bit because there’s people that think this is enabling and all this other stuff. It’s not. And so we’re ready to have that conversation.”
Overdose trainings fight ‘stigma’
The trainings begin with an overview of the scale of the overdose and opioid problem, including data specific to Missouri. They discuss how individuals end up addicted to opioids, the signs and symptoms of an overdose and how to use naloxone, a nasal spray.
Rath and Cushman also spend time debunking myths, like the idea that someone can overdose if their skin comes into contact with fentanyl. And they leave behind kits containing naloxone, literature about overdoses and addiction resources.
Rath plays a crucial role in the sessions, Cushman said, adding that while he can go through slides that make the point “opiate use is bad,” his partner offers a first-hand perspective.
“The peer is what makes the training,” Cushman said. “It humanizes the folks that suffer and I think the minute we do that, we have a change in mindset, we reduce our biases. We reduce the stigma.”
Rath, 41, said he’s been in recovery a little over 5 years – a period that began when he moved to the Kansas City region. While he works as an instructor with Cushman, his day job is working on a homeless response team in Lawrence.
His experience helps build rapport with people, he said, whether he’s conducting trainings or simply speaking with people.
“It opens up those conversations and it puts a human label on people,” Rath said.
MO-CORPS and others who work on overdose prevention have experienced a sense of whiplash this spring after the White House rolled out a drug strategy in early April with a strong focus on preventing overdose fatalities – only to hear about potential budget cuts.
The Trump administration’s top drug policy priority over the next year is reducing overdose fatalities, with a focus on fentanyl, according to an April 3 announcement by the White House. CNN, CBS News and other news outlets weeks later reported on a draft Health and Human Resources, or HHS, budget that would cut first responder grant funding.
“It’s definitely confusing is how I would describe it,” said Greg Boal, who manages first responder programming for MO-CORPS.
HHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to move the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, into a new office called the Administration for a Healthy America. SMAHSA administers the grant that funds MO-CORPS.
The proposal’s driven fears among Democrats and other critics that Kennedy’s putting SAMHSA’s work combating addiction at risk.
“I don’t want to shutter it. What we want to do is to shift that function into a place where it will be administrated more efficiently and that’s all,” Kennedy said at a congressional hearing earlier this month.
Kennedy said at the hearing, “we want to provide naloxone, Narcan.”
Overdose prevention program a ‘huge win’
MO-CORPS has an annual grant-driven budget of about $400,000, Boal said. While a few other agencies in Missouri also receive similar funding, MO-CORPS’ efforts are by far the largest.
In addition to the training offered to first responders, the kits containing naloxone that instructors leave behind have proved a “huge win” across Missouri, Boal said. Agencies have reported dropping overdose call volumes and fewer overdose fatalities – reports that appear reflected in Missouri data.
Drug overdose deaths among Missouri residents surged from 1,581 in 2019 to 2,180 in 2022, according to data from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. The bulk of the deaths in 2022 were from non-heroin opioids.
But deaths may have peaked in 2022. They declined the following year to 1,948. Data for 2024 isn’t yet available.
Some evidence exists that overdose deaths may have peaked in the Kansas City metro as well. Jackson, Clay, Platte and Cass counties collectively recorded 389 overdose deaths in 2023, a drop of 26 from the year before. Still, the total is well above the 206 deaths reported in 2019.
“It would be one thing if we were telling people how to treat dehydration. The protocol for dehydration’s been the same for 100 years. But with the drug overdose crisis, it’s constantly evolving, so we really need to stay on top of it,” Boal said.
Boal said MO-CORPS’ curriculum is constantly updating, along with an online version. With Missouri’s overdose death rate dropping, the last thing Boal and others want to see is the funding shut off, “then, God forbid, either overdose death rates stop going down or even start to go back up,” he said.
Republicans and Democrats in D.C. have both emphasized the importance of addressing the fentanyl crisis, Cushman said, adding that the best response has been shown to be creating a way to recovery, getting naloxone into communities and teaching people how to use it.
“When we talk about all these cuts, what we’re trying to do is get rid of waste and fraud and all this other stuff,” Cushman said. “There is no waste here. There is no fraud here. There is pure benefit.”
This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 1:06 PM.
