NORTHAMPTON — After 15 years directing harm reduction at Tapestry, Liz Whynott recently accepted a new post as senior program officer at RIZE Massachusetts Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to funding and collaborating on solutions to end the overdose crisis in Massachusetts.

RIZE announced that Whynott will lead the development and implementation of a new model for the state’s municipal training and technical assistance program, which RIZE assumed control of on July 1 through its Mosaic Opioid Recovery Partnership. The program is funded by opioid settlement dollars.

The transition of oversight of training and assistance to RIZE is designed to streamline services, deepen community connections, and align training and technical assistance more closely with the state.

In a statement released by RIZE, president and CEO of the company Julie Burns said that under Whynott’s leadership, communities can expect “thoughtful, personalized support” and help using opioid settlement money to fund tangible change.

“Liz brings deep experience, compassion and a fierce commitment to the people and communities most deeply impacted by the opioid crisis,” Burns said.

Whynott will oversee the contract across the state to provide training and technical assistance to people and support each community. At Tapestry, which offers sexual and reproductive care, food and nutrition education, and harm reduction services in western Massachusetts, she led efforts to expand harm reduction services.

When she began working in overdose prevention, Whynott said that harm reduction looked very different. According to Whynott, there was also a lot of stigma around drug use, especially within systems that interacted with drug users, such as health care facilities and legal systems. She added that in the early 2000s, there was a common view that the overdose reversal medication naloxone, commonly known by the brand name Narcan, enabled drug use.

“It was just really, really easy to see how much discrimination, societal stigma, existed with this population,” she said. “There still … continues to be a lot of things that need to get better or change in order to just support the well-being and the dignity of people that are continuing to use drugs.”

She aims to combat this stigma by continuing to focus on harm reduction, such as distributing naloxone to people who are at the highest risk for overdose.

Her work with RIZE involves settlements with big pharmaceutical companies and money that has been given to states across the country. Whynott’s role involves overseeing contractors across the state to help provide training and technical assistance to municipalities on using the funds.

The hub-and-spoke model involves RIZE, the organization, as the hub, and different spokes for different parts of Massachusetts. The idea is to provide a regional approach to care and approaches that are reflective of what the individual communities need and want, Whynott said.

She plans to have people embedded in different parts of the community to work with municipalities as “spokes” and establish different types of community advisory boards to ensure that they’re connecting with people affected by opioid use. She also wants community members’ voices to be heard.

Franklin, Hampden and Berkshire counties are the most rural areas in Massachusetts, Whynott said, and some small towns may lack the infrastructure to figure out how to spend the opioid settlement funds. She hopes to support municipalities, look at a regional approach and help them maximize that money in their communities.

While RIZE is based in Boston, Whynott, a Northampton resident, aims to bring her experience working in harm reduction in western Massachusetts to the role.

“I hope to be able to really serve and support western Mass. communities,” Whynott said, “to really get these opioid abatement dollars into the hands of people and into programs … to support people who have been most affected by opioid use and harmed by it.”