COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When
JD Vance founded “Our Ohio Renewal” a day after the 2016 presidential election, he promoted the charity as a vehicle for helping solve the scourge of opioid addiction that he had lamented in “Hillbilly Elegy,” his bestselling memoir.
But Vance shuttered the nonprofit last year and its foundation in May, shortly after
clinching the state’s Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, according to state records reviewed by The Associated Press. An AP review found that the charity’s most notable accomplishment — sending an addiction specialist to Ohio’s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency — was tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and
Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of
OxyContin.
The mothballing of Our Ohio Renewal and its dearth of tangible success raise questions about Vance’s management of the organization. His decision to bring on
Dr. Sally Satel is drawing particular scrutiny. She’s an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar whose writings questioning the role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis were published in The New York Times and elsewhere before she began the residency in the fall of 2018.
