HEALTH State OKs Promote Prevent group Plan to help towns address addiction, mental illness

A recent push by Rep. Jim Cantwell and several state legislators to focus more heavily on prevention for addiction, mental illness and suicide earned the governor’s support to move forward.

Gov. Charlie Baker’s approval signals stakeholders to start making nominations of people who will sit on the Promote Prevent Commission. The group is charged with answering three questions—What’s working in behavioral health promotion and upstream prevention? How can we fund what’s working without straining our budgets? And what can the Commonwealth achieve if we fund what works?

The new commission is a response to the opiate and other crises that have increasingly plagued Massachusetts communities in recent years. While there have been singular success stories in certain communities, legislators felt there should have been a method of sharing those best practices to benefit more people across the Commonwealth.

In Marshfield and Scituate, police reports of suicides and overdoses helped fuel a grassroots response that brought suicide and substance abuse prevention groups, peer recovery support groups, vigils, community partnerships and educational programs.

Some of the towns’ evidence-based efforts could benefit other communities, while successful methods of other communities could help Marshfield and Scituate, Cantwell said.

“We’ve been fighting a tide of health crises from obesity to opiate addiction that share a behavioral health core,” he said. “I and frankly, many dedicated people working in the trenches every day, believe upstream prevention and promotion are the keys to reducing costs and stamping out health issues before they ignite into crises.”

The ideal commission would be all-inclusive, Cantwell said. State groups that would benefit from the commission’s actions, such as the attorney general; South Shore Hospital’s Youth Health Connection; Massachusetts Organization for Addiction Recovery; Association for Behavioral Healthcare; and Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee; are among those invited to nominate members.

Several community coalitions, public health experts, and local departments of public health will also get to offer input on the committee.

“This bill will give prevention leaders a new voice to highlight what decades of practice have shown: prevention and promotion work,” Dr. Barbara Green, director of South Shore Hospital’s Youth Health Connection and SouthShore FACTS (Families, Adolescents and Communities Together against Substances), said in a statement.

Studies from groups such as the Barnstable County Regional Substance Abuse Council and Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse show less than 5 percent of public funding and healthcare dollars go to prevention. The bulk of funds go toward response to an existing problem such as criminal justice, social services and inpatient care, the legislation’s supporters argue.

“Our success in addressing the long-term consequences of the opiate epidemic depends on creating a comprehensive strategy that prioritizes prevention and early intervention,” Cheryl Bartlett, former Public Health Commissioner and CEO of ALOSA Health, said.

Over time, Cantwell feels the focus on prevention can actually reduce high healthcare costs while helping more people and communities.

He said he hopes to see the group start work early this fall. That way, he said, the commission could have its first ideas in place by the next state budget cycle and start to set goals for the future.

“Now the real work begins,” Cantwell said. “We’ve got to make sure the commission comes up with some real tangible steps and goals.”

—Follow editor Kristi Funderburk on Twitter @kfunder