Michigan’s official tool for finding addiction treatment is broken on mobile phones, and critics say the state has done little to fix it since the tool launched in November 2024.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services built the substance use disorder mapping tool to help residents find treatment options. Simple idea. But Jonathan Stoltman, director of the Opioid Policy Institute, says the platform fails the people who need it most, and the state has largely shrugged off requests to make it work.
On a mobile device, the tool displays only a partial map. The “full screen” option makes the view smaller, not larger. Filters and zoom controls interfere with each other. Try to tap certain features and the display shifts, pushing information offscreen. Stoltman put it plainly: “I don’t even know how you would use that to find the information that you needed.”
A broken tool in a real crisis
That’s not just a UX complaint. Michigan, like the rest of the country, is still in the middle of an overdose crisis. People in addiction often have one window to act, one moment when they or a family member is ready to ask for help. A peer navigator trying to pull up treatment options on a phone doesn’t have time to wrestle with a half-loaded map.
Stoltman said many people facing addiction don’t have regular computer access. Their phone is the screen. So a desktop tool that sort of works isn’t good enough, and a mobile version that’s completely broken is a real barrier to care.
“When you have someone in that moment that’s interacting with a thing that says, like, ‘I’m looking for treatment, either for myself or for one of my loved ones,’ that is a crucial thing to help them navigate as smoothly as possible,” Stoltman told Michigan Advance.
Stoltman and members of the Michigan Society of Addiction Medicine brought these concerns to the Michigan House Oversight Subcommittee on Public Health and Food Safety in February. Not their first time raising the alarm. He said advocates made repeated appeals to the state dating back to the tool’s launch and got nowhere.
The state sets its own rules here
Here’s what makes this harder to dismiss as a minor tech glitch. Michigan has its own digital accessibility standards that require state development teams to use responsive design so content adapts to different screen sizes. The addiction treatment locator, by Stoltman’s account and by the Michigan Advance’s own testing, doesn’t meet that bar.
This isn’t a case of the state running into some complex regulatory gray area. The state wrote the rules. The tool doesn’t follow them.
The practical effect lands hardest on peer navigators, people who often work on the street or in community settings, helping individuals connect to services in real time. Not at a desk. Not on a laptop. On a phone, walking next to someone who just said they want help.
What’s being asked
Stoltman and the Opioid Policy Institute want MDHHS to overhaul the platform, starting with making the mobile version actually functional. The data accuracy issues compound the problem. If the tool works but points someone to a program that’s no longer accepting patients or has wrong contact information, the failure is the same from the user’s perspective. A dead end.
The Opioid Policy Institute focuses specifically on evidence-based approaches to the overdose crisis. Stoltman’s frustration isn’t abstract. His organization works with the people this tool was supposedly built to serve.
Reporting from Michigan Advance confirmed the mobile problems through its own testing of the tool earlier this month.
MDHHS has not announced any timeline for fixes. The subcommittee hearing in February came and went without a public commitment from the department to address the complaints.
What to watch
The subcommittee is the pressure point right now. Whether the House Oversight Subcommittee on Public Health and Food Safety follows up with MDHHS, or lets the February testimony sit without further action, will tell you a lot about how seriously Lansing is taking this.
For Detroiters, the stakes aren’t abstract. Wayne County has been among the hardest-hit counties in Michigan throughout the overdose crisis. A tool that can’t load on a phone isn’t a tool. It’s a checkbox.
