Please join the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the North Quabbin Region on Wednesday, September 11, 2024, from 2 PM – 3:30 PM for “What We Did, What We Learned: A Community Meeting to Discuss HEALing Communities Study Findings” with Dr. Jeffrey Samet, Massachusetts HCS Principal Investigator, and Carly Bridden, Massachusetts HCS Project Manager, of Boston Medical Center. Please RSVP for this free, in-person event here, to be held at the Olver Transit Center, 12 Olive Street in Greenfield, in the Allen Meeting Room.

Light refreshments will be served, and parking is available at the Olive Street Parking Garage. More information about the garage and hourly parking rates can be found here.

This gathering will provide the Opioid Task Force and other community members an opportunity to reflect on the HCS national findings, which “showed the intervention did not impact opioid-related overdose deaths over the evaluation period.”

However, our participation in the study yielded an array of positive outcomes, including a reduction in overdose fatalities over the study period. It also allowed us to create Addiction Consult Services at Baystate Franklin Medical Center Emergency Department, install public access naloxone containers, create a process to offer recovery coaching at Baystate Franklin Medical Center Emergency Department, and more.

This session allows us to understand our work in the context of a national study and how we are building on and sustaining our HCS successes.

Launched in 2019, the HEALing Communities Study was a bold experiment. Part of its approach was to invest 343.7 million dollars in 67 communities across the four states of Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio to reduce opioid-related fatalities using various strategies to implement three goals: 1) increasing naloxone distribution and overdose prevention education, 2) increasing access to medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD), and 3) improving opioid prescribing safety.