Opioid Settlement Coordinator: Samuels excited to be back with Burke

A familiar face, Dr. Katie Varnadoe Samuels, is back in Burke County as the new opioid settlement coordinator, the county announced this week.

Samuels, a Burke native, previously served as the county’s director of behavioral health for 18 months before leaving the position last November.

In the interim, she worked for consulting group CEG (Community Education Group). She was selected as coordinator from a competitive field of nearly 100 applicants. Samuels, 41, will earn $100,000 per year.

“I’m really excited about it,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of momentum to move forward with some of the things that we were working on before I left, and I think that the pieces are in place now where we can implement some of the strategic planning that we did and really start to see some impact in the community.”

Although Samuels’ new role will serve a similar function to the position she held before, the dynamics behind it are different.

Previously, the coordinator was part of the Department of Public Health.

Now, the position will function the same as what County Manager Brian Epley called “a department-head-level executive role in a centralized function that reports through the county manager’s office.”

“I think that facilitates a much higher level of coordination and communication and gives her access to some of the peers and some of the community partners that she’ll need to be most effective.”

During her time with CEG, Samuels conducted an analysis of opioid settlement directors across the state. She found that structuring played a key role in success.

“We found that the important part of the position was the systems building and networking, and also the support around the processes for things like contracting, decision making, spending, and allocations,” Samuels said. “The closer that you are to the decision makers, which is the commissioners in this case, the easier it is to get things moved along faster and to make decisions quickly, instead of having more layers in the process that slow things down.”

Epley said Samuels’ qualifications combined with her experience in her previous role made her a solid choice to lead the program, which will guide the county in using the $25 million it is slated to receive over a 15-year period ending in 2038.

“It was an incredibly competitive recruitment selection process,” Epley said, adding that Burke’s newly formed opioid advisory committee played a key role in screening the applicants and unanimously agreed Samuels was the one for the job.

“She rose to the top of a very competitive, very sophisticated field, and I think that’s because of those unique factors. There’s an established kind of pedigree there, and that’s one of the things that made her stand apart. We’re thrilled to have her.”

Samuels’ prior departure came at a time when the county was in the process of developing its official strategic plan to detail exactly how it would utilize its share of the $1.4 billion North Carolina received as part of the nationwide settlement.

The plan was originally scheduled to be unveiled at the Burke board of commissioners’ budget retreat in early March, but the process was delayed until the county hired a new coordinator.

According to the rules set by the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (NCACC) as part of the settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, counties and municipalities must submit a detailed, long-range plan.

Without one, local governments are unable to employ the full range of recovery and treatment strategies allowed under the agreement.

Samuels said she would get to work immediately on finishing the plan, but there are plenty of short-term solutions that can be implemented as well.

“We don’t have to work on the strategic plan and do nothing else,” she said. “There are a lot of things that we can do right away, and do those things quickly, while at the same time we’re looking at the longer-term strategic plan.”