By J. Cherry Sullivan
Last month, in my Northampton Health Department basement office in the Puchalski Municipal Building, I received a phone call from a distraught mother. She was in tears, looking for help to get her son into treatment for his heroin addiction. As Program Coordinator for Hampshire HOPE, it’s common for me to receive such calls, pleas from distraught loved ones trying to navigate a broken treatment system.
There was little I could do that day for this mother beyond providing names of people who could help her son. This was a source of frustration for both me and the despairing mother at the other end of the line. “Why aren’t you doing anything about this,” she finally uttered in exasperation. Believe me, I understand her urgency. I feel it in my work almost every day. We face an enormous public health problem in our community.
Today, we launch a monthly column in the Gazette’s health section that we hope will educate the community about local efforts underway to address the opioid epidemic. Hampshire HOPE is this county’s heroin and opioid abuse prevention coalition, which brings together medical providers, law enforcement and elected officials, mental health and substance use experts as well as people in recovery and those trying mightily to be in recovery. We bring this wide assortment of community members to the table as we determine the best strategies to address the opioid epidemic and work to save lives of community members who are struggling with substance use disorders. This column will be written by different people every month, all members of our coalition, including a district attorney, treatment and prevention specialists, people in recovery, and families trying to help them. This is a problem that affects a wide swath of our community and we’re taking a big tent approach in response.
Stories related to this opioid epidemic appear in the media daily. The impact of addiction – to opioids and other drugs (including alcohol) – is felt by countless individuals and families in our community. For some, the insidious nature of the opioid epidemic in particular came as a shock, while others have seen it destroying pockets of our community for decades. What faces us today is an epidemic created by the proverbial perfect storm: a medical culture of over-prescribing pain medication, community members made vulnerable to addiction by genetics or trauma, powerful drug cartels infiltrating the US with cheap and deadly heroin.
As with other public health menaces, this one calls for a large scale, community-driven response. Nationally and locally, we need to improve and expand the continuum of services available to people with substance use disorders. We need a comprehensive campaign to prevent youth from using in the first place so we won’t have to treat addictions down the line. As a community, we need to join together to reduce shame and discrimination experienced by those struggling with addiction and increase compassion and understanding by everyone else. This is a cultural shift that values all human beings, no matter their struggles.
Hampshire HOPE, created late in 2014 and funded in 2015 with a three-year state Bureau of Substance Abuse Services grant, targets Northampton, Easthampton, Amherst, Pelham, South Hadley, Belchertown, and Ware. Working in conjunction with a Federal Hal Rogers grant awarded to the Northwestern District Attorney’s office, we serve the entire county.
Over the past year, Hampshire HOPE has intervened in a variety of ways. We’ve worked to prevent youth misuse of prescription opioids through safe storage education, expanding medication drop boxes, and providing training to school nurses. We’ve worked to prevent fatal overdoses by increasing awareness and access to Naloxone, providing overdose education at the Hampshire County Jail, reaching out to the community with initiatives such as Northampton Police’s DART Program (the subject for a future column, no doubt) and building bridges in intervention, treatment, and recovery services. We will continue to evaluate this community’s needs and respond with a collaborative approach.
But the reality is we can’t always feel the changes we need as quickly as we hope to. There’s no denying that people are dying in Massachusetts every day. There are deep roots to addiction that won’t be simple to solve. As I said to that mother who called my office in June, collaborative work takes time and sometimes seems maddeningly slow. Effective response to the opioid epidemic requires changing systems of care so they work effectively and in a sustainable manner. While there are national and statewide efforts in the works, changes are most effective when combined with a local, unified approach. As we gather data and develop interventions, we are also building relationships. We are in this for the long haul and we can only do that together.
Hampshire HOPE that creates that space for a shared community vision for all of us who have a stake in this.
J. Cherry Sullivan is Program Coordinator of Hampshire HOPE, Hampshire County’s opioid task force.