Yearly Archives: 2016

Telegram & Gazette
Date: 12/18/16

Simply put, the scope of the current opioid epidemic is staggering. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people died from drug overdoses last year than in any year on record. And, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription opioid pain relievers and heroin), has nearly quadrupled since 1999. No community is immune. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health recently reported that 209 people lost their battle with opioid addiction last year in Worcester County alone. That's 17 people a month or four people each week.

Telegram & Gazette
Date: 10/09/16

WORCESTER – Brian Keith, a 37-year-old city resident and banker who's recovering from crack cocaine and alcohol addictions, said he hadn't worked out in three months.

Worcester Business Journal Online
Date: 4/26/16

Worcester's Spectrum Health Systems has named Kurt Isaacson as the organization's new president and CEO, replacing Charles “Chuck” Faris as he steps into retirement.

Worcester Business Journal Online
Date: 2/15/15

When Kelly McCausland was teaching yoga and mindfulness at rehabilitation facilities, she had a lot of interactions with patients who believed in their sobriety, only to succumb to their addiction months or even weeks later.

The Boston Globe
Date: 3/22/15

Mornings start with yoga and meditation. Then there's breakfast, the first of three gourmet meals a day. After dinner, a massage helps to calm the mind and muscles before bed.

Worcester Magazine
Date: 2/17/16

Chuck Faris joined Spectrum Health Systems as a counselor in 1971, not long after the start of a new decade. Now, 45 years later, and a little more than halfway through the second decade of a new century, he is calling an end to a career that saw him rise all the way to the top.

Worcester Magazine
Date: 4/26/16

Kurt Isaacson has been named the new president and CEO of Spectrum Health Systems.

The Boston Globe
Date: 8/3/16

More than ever, the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl is claiming lives in Massachusetts, fueling an overdose death toll that continues to rise, according to data released Wednesday by the state Department of Public Health.

Telegram & Gazette
Date: 8/9/16

Law enforcement, for many years, has had the ability to detain intoxicated individuals if police determined that they represented a danger to themselves or others. Inexplicably, those rules had not been updated to include drug users, even as the ongoing opioid epidemic began to swell throughout the Commonwealth, including in Worcester County where between 2014 and last year the increase in overdose deaths matched or was slightly worse percentage-wise than the state as a whole.