Staffers at The University of Vermont Center on Rural Addiction are waiting for official word, but it appears they’ll get to keep their jobs since the center will continue to receive federal funding.
UVM Staff United, the university workers’ union, said the center director informed all 14 full-time employees last week that they would be laid off Sept. 1 due to lack of funding. The Center on Rural Addiction — whose work focuses on battling substance use disorder in rural communities — is fully funded by the federal government until Aug. 31.
“These layoffs are coming at a dire time for substance use and overdose in rural areas of our state, region and nation,” Danielle Parent, co-lead steward at UVM Staff United, said Tuesday morning. “Fatal overdoses in Vermont continue to rise at an alarming rate.”
A letter dated July 31, which VTDigger obtained, informed center staffers of their other job options at the university. It instructed recipients to inform the center director by Aug. 10 of their preferred job option.
But on Tuesday afternoon, in response to a VTDigger inquiry, UVM spokesperson Adam White said there are no plans to close the center or lay off staff because the university now expects to receive a new round of funding from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.
The agency, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed Tuesday afternoon that it would continue to fund the center, as it has done since the program was established in 2019. An agency official said the center’s funding notice for another year of operation will be released this week or next week.
The layoff notices, White said, were sent to center employees as part of the university’s routine reporting requirements and fair-warning processes when a grant that funds positions is about to end.
“Every expectation is that HRSA funds are on their way to continue the program,” White said in an email, referring to the federal funding agency. “The University would bridge the funding between grant cycles if there were to be a delay.”
As of late afternoon Tuesday, Parent said the university’s administration had not yet formally notified either the workers’ union or center employees that the layoffs have been averted and the center would not close.
The center’s work includes training rural health care providers, informing the public of the latest substance use trends and supplying community-based partners with the opioid-overdose reversal drug naloxone, more popularly known as Narcan. Besides Vermont, its programs also operate in New Hampshire, Maine and several counties in New York.
