ORDER-2016-83 : An order relative to the Board of Aldermen to discuss and explore the need for a full-time Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator position within the City of Melrose.

Transcript (~54 min @ 40:24)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 40:10 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Public participation is closed. I do want to mention that this meeting is being recorded and will be played on MMTV and also can be accessed online. We have one order before us tonight, order number 2016-83, an order relative to the Board of Aldermen to discuss and explore the need for a full-time substance abuse prevention coordinator position within the City of Melrose.

▶ 40:36 Speaker 5: Motion to recommend.

▶ 40:37 Speaker 4: Motion to suspend the rules.

▶ 40:40 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: We have a motion to suspend the rules by Alderman Inferno, seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis. This is to bring up the city officials, Alderman? Yes. It's been necessary to see the officials to come.

▶ 41:07 Speaker 6: We have a small PowerPoint presentation today.

▶ 41:11 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Oh, all those in favor of suspending the rules? Aye.

▶ 41:14 Speaker 6: Aye.

▶ 41:15 Speaker 7: Opposed? The rules are suspended.

▶ 41:23 Speaker 6: So we put together a short PowerPoint presentation to just give you a little bit of an overview of the past 11

▶ 41:34 Speaker 6: And we're just passing out some products that we've developed over time. Some of you who have been on the board a long time are familiar with the social host liability law. We know there's been a number of newer aldermen that may not as be familiar with that.

▶ 41:56 Speaker 6: There's our information guide that we helped fund.

▶ 42:04 Speaker 6: and also our Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition's resource guide.

▶ 42:24 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Ms. Clay, for members of the public watching, are these all materials that are available through your office, if anybody?

▶ 42:30 Speaker 6: Most of them are online on our website, and if they're not online, we have paper copies in the office. Thanks, Chair.

▶ 42:50 Speaker 6: Okay, so my name is Ruth Clay, I'm the Health Director for the City of Melrose. And I have Jen Kelly with us, who's our Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator, and Lauren Dustin, who's our Assistant Director, Assistant Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator, or our Assistant Staff.

▶ 43:12 Speaker 6: So all three of us are going to participate in this discussion, and you can interrupt us at any time you want to ask a question or wait until the end, whatever you're most comfortable with.

▶ 43:39 Speaker 6: Marybeth, we need to help the remotes not remoting.

▶ 43:56 Speaker 8: Okay.

▶ 43:58 Speaker 6: We'll take turns going over and .

▶ 44:07 Speaker 6: Okay. So, just a very brief history of the substance abuse prevention work that we've been doing in Melrose.

▶ 44:20 Speaker 6: In the mid-2000s, 2005, we had a pretty high profile death of one of our high school students. At the same time, the state health department was offering $10,000 planning grants, which we applied for and formed the original coalition. The coalition is basically a group that meets monthly made up of people from all different segments of Melrose, including some departments like police and school, the business community, our youth, youth and parents, our houses of worship, fraternal organizations. We try to have people that represent the different demographics, different ethnicities, different age groups, different constituencies. And we started that group, it's all volunteer, in 2005. We were fortunate at the time that we had a local resident, Carol Oliver, whose career is in substance abuse prevention, and she came to our meetings and basically guided us to form us into a format that would put us in position to be ready to apply for some of the big grants. So that first year was a planning year. And at the same time, at

▶ 45:51 Speaker 6: the State House, there was a changeover in personnel, and our state representative was asked us, gee, you know, are there things that the city that he could do to help? What did we need money for? So, of course, I immediately said, well, I can't really do all this substance abuse prevention work in addition to all my other duties I it's really important work and I don't feel like I'm really giving it justice and we really need a staff person to do this and he was able to secure some earmarked funding also from the state health department and we hired our first coordinator who many of you remember Kara showers and who still works with us in a different capacity now so having a full-time coordinator who could spend 35 hours a week working on this made a huge difference at the same time as we had hired her we had applied for our first federal drug-free community grant and just as we hired her we received notice that we had the grant which secured funding for the future for at least five years so that we would have a staff person and at the time it It was $89,000 a year, which basically was, you know, salary benefits and a small amount left over. That DFC grant that you've heard us talk about many times, we have applied for and received twice. That's the max we can apply for. It's been over a million dollars, and that is federal money. In addition, over the past four years, we've had another federal grant, the STOP grant, which is basically an underage drinking grant and that's a four-year grant for

▶ 47:43 Speaker 6: another $200,000 so in addition to that we have a couple of regional substance abuse grants every time I come up here and talk to you I know I'm always talking about the Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition which is Malden Medford Melrose, Stoneham, Wakefield, sometimes Winchester, sometimes Reading, the rest are kind of the core. And we received, well, three years ago now, an opiate grant. Some of you have come to some of those meetings. That's the MOPSI grant that Yair is talking about. And that's a seven year, $700,000 grant where that staff person works exclusively on opiate and opioid issues, prevention, intervention, treatment, and coordinating the efforts among our region.

▶ 48:36 Speaker 4: And that's Medford.

▶ 48:38 Speaker 6: Yeah, and Medford is the lead for that one. The staff person is their employee. And then, I know you remember, because this was just last year, when we got our new SAPSE grant, which is the Regional Underage Drinking and Other Drugs Grant, Liz Parsons, our staff person Melrose is the lead community for that grant and we're in our first of seven years for that so that's another seven hundred thousand dollars which means over the past 11 years we've brought in almost three million dollars in grants to the city of Melrose and I think that's pretty

▶ 49:17 Speaker 6: awesome over 11 years so I'm going to turn over the next part to Jen yep so we

▶ 49:20 Speaker 3: just want to give you a snapshot of what we've been working on over the past 11 years we do a lot of assessment to see what's going on in the community in our region and we use key informant interviews focus groups police surveys death record surveys hospital data first responder data and this is from our youth risk behavior survey and we've compared it to our read the region around us and we wanted to show you what it looks like this is from 2013 so past 30-day use of alcohol tobacco and marijuana for our high school students so you can see what it looks like compared to our our neighbors and just of note it goes up to 60% on the on the percentages on the left it's not a hundred percent so it might look to you like a lot more doing it then but as you can see Melrose is definitely number one if you want to call it that for rates of underage drinking past 30-day use which we consider current use and second and

▶ 50:33 Peter D. Mortimer: first in marijuana will you change the absolutely again ready to change the sheet the only city that has that little green rectangle to the right of the red

▶ 50:42 Speaker 3: one oh that shouldn't be there sorry well that's actually prescription drugs which we made a separate chart of which we'll show you in just an hour on this

▶ 50:51 Speaker 8: just an error I apologize yes don't know what we didn't notice that yeah no

▶ 51:01 Peter D. Mortimer: problem and oh and there you go and these statistics they're self-reported

▶ 51:07 Speaker 3: just a write-up survey yep so it's done every other year by all our seven to 12th graders completely anonymous and voluntary they can opt out or their parents can opt out so we have many many many years of data I believe the first time Melrose did the YRBS was 1999 so we have lots and lots of data and the the rates have you know gone up and down a little bit depending on the different substances but we can certainly show you the historical data if you're at all

▶ 51:46 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: interested we have that available is all the dad are all of those communities I'm

▶ 51:57 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: sorry I'm sorry all set thank you are all of those communities are those results from the 2013 survey it's all 2000 but they're all doing it they all

▶ 52:13 Speaker 3: it at the same year yes and you can change the slide and this is prescription drug use by grade for our high school students and as you can see it creeps up each year the first set is have you ever tried a prescription drug not prescribed to you by a doctor and the next grouping is in the past 30 days and the reason we don't have a comparison to the other towns as in the previous slide that's because we asked the questions differently in the different towns so it was apples to oranges it wasn't an exact comparison so also definitely as you can see as the kids get older it happens more often and it has been creeping up over the pet over the years as you would imagine as the

▶ 53:05 Speaker 3: opiate crisis gets worse this is opioid death record data from 2010 to 2014 the comparing the towns in our Mopsy grant it's you know what the the towns are

▶ 53:15 Speaker 6: kind of small so from left to right it says Malden Medford Melrose Redding

▶ 53:26 Speaker 3: Stone and Wakefield just I know my eyes and we acquired this data by actually going in and the coordinator of this grant went through record by record all the death records in the town and counted up the opioid related deaths and And I just wanted to point out that we just added the 2014 data to a different graph that we had that was 210 to 2013. And just for instance, I just wanted to show you how much it has increased since 2014, and we don't have the accurate records yet for 2015. But in Malden, for example, from 2010 to 2013, there were 35 overdoses, and in 2014 alone, there were 17. in Melrose there were nine in the three years and in 2014 there were three and in Medford there were 16 in those three years and just 12 in last year so we just wanted to show just I just wanted to point out that it's definitely

▶ 54:25 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: getting worse I'd like to ask unless there are objections if we could hold our questions from members of the board until the end of the presentation so we can make sure that committee members have a chance to speak and we can go in

▶ 54:35 Peter D. Mortimer: order that way madam chairman if you wouldn't mind um i'm getting a little older and i might

▶ 54:42 Peter D. Mortimer: not be able to remember my questions as they as they sent out they said if you have questions as the charts come up uh they'd be willing to entertain them at that time if it's if it's not too much trouble i'd like to ask as we sure go ahead um on the other chart uh the one that

▶ 54:58 Peter D. Mortimer: had the use of alcohol tobacco and marijuana reading wasn't included on that chart as i recall

▶ 55:06 Speaker 3: um just a moment and that is because there is a grant from our um sapsi grant which reading isn't a piece of so that's why they're not included we actually do have their statistics as well for that

▶ 55:20 Peter D. Mortimer: i'm just wondering if they're not there and if we can presume that this is uh self-reported that it's generally accurate, even though self-reporting, anonymous self-reporting isn't the most dependable. If we can presume that it's generally accurate, would you go to the other one about the opioid deaths, please? And if we can presume that opioid deaths are...

▶ 55:43 Speaker 6: That's not self-reported.

▶ 55:45 Peter D. Mortimer: I understand. Oh, I know. If you're dead, you can't self-report. I understand that. Of course, if you're dead, you can't self-report. But if we can presume that the number of deaths is correlative to the amount of opioid use.

▶ 56:03 Peter D. Mortimer: We can see that Melrose has a high number above average from the other towns that were on that of alcohol and marijuana. But it looks like compared to Malden and Medford that there's less opioid use.

▶ 56:23 Speaker 3: know according to this if we can the population of Malden and Medford this is pure raw numbers it's not you know per capita thank you just to go on this job

▶ 56:39 Gail Infurna: here when we're talking about this death record data that you collected this is of any ages this is not high school yes all ages and we do have the age

▶ 56:45 Speaker 3: breakdown I have we have a lot more data we just didn't want to bore you with too many stats so but if you are interested we can certainly want to just write you

▶ 56:57 Speaker 6: I want to show you a snapshot of where we're at right now I know you've all we've given you other presentations for like the youth risk behavior survey we basically just wanted to give you a quick overview pick out a couple of graphs to show you to give a taste of where we're at with substance abuse and

▶ 57:17 Monica C. Medeiros: this may end up being on one of the other charts but I'm wondering if you could go sorry go back one in the communities that are listed there do all or any of their police or fire have the use of Narcan or have they during that

▶ 57:39 Speaker 3: almost all almost almost all but not since 2010 maybe only in the last year

▶ 57:44 Monica C. Medeiros: maybe only in the last few months so so probably I'm just guessing that those

▶ 57:55 Speaker 3: numbers would be worse without it yes absolutely and we just wanted to show you this chart although the caveat is the numbers here are way way way underreported for non-fatal overdoses this is just the latest data that we have unfortunately it's old but just to show you this is hallmark health non fail overdoses so people have been to the emergency room quite often people don't go to the emergency room after an overdose so we don't hear about many of them so these numbers are but they're still frightfully high but we just wanted to show you not even close to the true numbers and we just want to show

▶ 58:41 Speaker 3: you Bureau substance abuse services admissions to treatment this is all public treatment data so public treatment centers this is why we're able to tell you that 224 people in in 2014 from Melrose were admitted for treatment in a public facility and you can see the numbers for the other towns this is all age groups now this is all age groups we have it broken down by ages as well if you are interested I can definitely share that with you and this is when you enter treatment you are asked your drug of choice and as you can see heroin is

▶ 59:28 Speaker 3: far and above the drug of choice alcohol alcohol second which is why you know the prevention work is so important because most youth substance use starts with underage drinking and here we see it continues for our Melrose folks into

▶ 59:46 Speaker 3: adulthood so what the coalition really tries to to do is to increase the protective factors in our youth and our community and we just listed some of the protective factors that we try and focus on we try and increase these and reduce the risk factors and the reason we do that not only for substance use but you know these protective factors apply to all sorts of risky behavior whether it's sexual dating driving violence online behaviors these protective factors

▶ 1:00:20 Speaker 8: strengthen you know when they're strengthened help reduce the risk

▶ 1:00:29 Speaker 3: factors of our of our youth so we not only work in with trying to affect individuals and their peers we work with their their family we work with the schools and we work with the larger community so we're trying to affect each

▶ 1:00:48 Speaker 3: level so this is just a snapshot of what we're doing so we work around education and awareness policy change increasing access to treatment services and the supports for the family and friends of the users and we really focus on teen led peer-to-peer activities in our middle and high school youth action team and again I actually didn't mention this before but we are very much a believer of the disease model of addiction we don't believe it's a moral issue in any way that it's a brain based substance use addiction brain disease so these are just some of the things you do and on the sheets that I handed out to they're listed there so you don't have to remember them all again just a snapshot we do a whole lot but these are some of the ones we just wanted to point out to you a lot of training for school faculty parents and coaches sometimes it's myself and Lauren doing the trainings often we bring in outside experts to do mental health first aid is one particular example that we will be sponsored last year we have a middle school social skills group that's been ongoing since last year we've had we're about to start our fifth round of that they're eight week eight week rounds and those are very well received and we get

▶ 1:02:13 Speaker 6: great report backs on that are the school faculty and coaches required to

▶ 1:02:26 Speaker 3: take the substance abuse 101 course out of curiosity how many faculty actually

▶ 1:02:38 Robert A. Boisselle: show up for the substance abuse would they be the first people they see the

▶ 1:02:44 Speaker 3: effect of the coaches also they can be so we have been able to do some small department like the guidance department the whole guidance department where everyone was required to come but we've offered some voluntary trainings and yes honestly we've had small turnout we've had voluntary coaches trainings and we've had fairly good numbers but not you know not the high numbers we'd like

▶ 1:03:10 Robert A. Boisselle: to see so basically the school faculty you might say that the first responders that they can actually see what's going on with these kids thank you one of the

▶ 1:03:19 Speaker 6: protective factors that we know makes a difference in youth lives is having an adult that they trust to talk to and some of you remember that we've also tried to do every other year a survey of the teachers and parents the pride survey and one of the questions we asked the staff then is we kind of asked them specific questions about different substances to gain to gauge their specific knowledge but we also asked them you know how how well prepared do you feel and one of the the information that we've gotten back from that survey has been very clear that they feel like they need to know more they need to be better prepared to if the kid does come up to them know what to say how do I handle it that kind of work but we you know we can't make them go to that kind

▶ 1:04:09 Robert A. Boisselle: of training but your surveys coming from the teachers asking for that type of training and so forth and it's being offered and only a small handful is

▶ 1:04:25 Speaker 3: attending is that correct thank you we've been a very big sponsor because we've been able to have this grant money to donate to Melrose grad night which as you all know has been a great success Lauren has been on the planning committee she's worked it all night long so we were very pleased to be involved in that we've done parenting skills workshops for oh eight eight years I believe a baby nine over 350 families from Melrose have been through that program called guiding good choices we have medication take back in in the police department where you can drop off those unused medications as we know most kids are going into their family and friends and grandparents and neighbors medicine cabinets and experimenting with prescription drugs that's almost always how kids first get their hands on on these medications so we've had we participated in national take-back events with the police and we have an ongoing take-back drop box at the police station and right downstairs there's a needle drop box as well use needle drop box we work as a lot in policy as much as we can the Board of Health we work with them and they passed a drug paraphernalia ban last year that took place last January so the items you may have been seeing in the convenience stores such as the glass pipes or the love roses which are uses crack pipes or all the different paraphernalia is now banned from Melrose and the our local businesses have been doing a great job job keeping up with that and also we do some enforcement as well the alcohol compliance checks have been going on for years when it started I believe it was only 60% of the local places were compliant not serving youth when we

▶ 1:06:27 Speaker 3: first did it and now almost always we have a hundred percent compliance so obviously the with the opioid overdose epidemic that we are in the midst of we try to do a lot to help people get into treatment and have people not overdose or start at all we created the resource guides that we gave out here these have been these have been great to help out community members family members friends users themselves we the hospital all local providers first responders we've been handing these out and hopefully get it they're getting into the hands of people who need them the police ambulance and school nurses now all are trained in the administration of Narcan the police have had it since last December and I believe the number of saves that they have is 17 at this point it could be it could be a little higher but so in one year they've used it that many times and we've also offered community trainings for users family members and friends of users to administer the Narcan as well as overdose prevention in general so what to do if Narcan is not available I work in the middle in the high school and I coordinate on-site on-site case work so some kids are referred to myself by guidance school psychologist administration sometimes the students themselves or their peers so I work to help get them the resources that they need maybe their family needs more resources and something we're very proud of is being one of the original schools to allow individual and group substance specific substance abuse treatment in the schools this was a big deal for Melrose to be able to do this so you know kudos to the school department for letting that happen as it was so needed so that's been going on for for four years as well so I'm gonna talk a little

▶ 1:08:39 Speaker 6: bit about partnerships because this isn't about the coalition and it's not about the health department it's really about the whole community in Melrose and all the different constituencies and resources and people and businesses and organizations coming together to address it and so we have listed from the coalition itself and the the diverse membership on there to our local departments like EMS and the fire department even DPW gets involved because we've done surveys of the city to see where the party spots are, and we make physical changes to those areas, and DPWs is the one that goes out and does that. Our local pharmacies work with us to make sure that when they hand out prescription drugs and needles that the people know where they can dispose of the needles afterwards and extra drugs. We work really closely with our neighbors' coalitions, and we've actually helped a number of our neighboring communities start their own coalition's of course we work really closely with Hallmark Health with two

▶ 1:09:57 Speaker 3: grants sure because with our Mopsi grant in this large assessment that we did we found a community health worker type positions where people could be led through the very confusing substance abuse treatment system it's very frustrating beds are full you have to call back constantly it's very difficult when you are going through withdrawal to find these kind of places on your own so over and over we heard the need for these navigators the need for these navigators to help people through the treatment maze so that's what we know we brought all our assessment information to Hallmark Health and a grant came up for them called the chart grant and out of that they've just begun starting last month this wonderful program called the coach program which is just that it's a one social work manager and three three community health workers who meet the person where they're at whether it's in their home at the treatment center at the hospital and they focus on three different populations people who have been oh who've been revert their overdose has been reversed with Narcan people who visited the how the emergency room at either hospital more than ten times in a year or moms who have substance abuse issues and their babies who are substance exposed at birth which Melrose Wakefield Hospital has the third highest level in the state of substance exposed newborns which a lot of that surprises a lot of people and we were able to start a collaborative because that issue is so big at Melrose Wakefield Hospital and our surrounding communities a collaborative to address the moms and the babies so all all sorts of people were involved to form this collaborative DCF early intervention treatment providers from all running the gamut so that's been a very exciting

▶ 1:11:59 Monica C. Medeiros: development as well in in the substance addicted babies is it do you have any data on on what substance that is is it it's almost always of an opiate oh yeah

▶ 1:12:22 Speaker 9: um I mean not exclusively but I would say 90% thank you our coalition is made up of lots of different action teams and one of our most active action team is our youth action team it consists of about 20 high school students we meet about twice monthly on to work on various projects various initiatives there's just some pictures up here showing them doing different things one of the major things they do every year is present to their freshmen the freshman wellness classes in the high school on the YRBS stats and to clear up different myths that their peers might have they also go to different trainings such as the CADCA conference which we're actually bringing five youth to next week they go to Capitol Hill they meet with their our local representatives there there's them with Senator Warren and they get to learn about substance abuse strategies with other youth from across the nation they also do a monthly newsflash in the bathrooms in the high school it's called newsflash in the know while you go so they choose the topic each month and they write this short little it's like a flyer you know one pager and it goes on the back of every bathroom door in the high school faculty and staff bathrooms as well captive audience yeah it's been a real hit people people love it and the kids really like putting it out so this is just a range of topics we've had over the past two years we've been doing it and it's so popular that other organizations in the school other student clubs actually ask us if they can put stuff in it also and we love that we have an 84 chapter which I know you've heard about they just were awarded a $1,000 grant to do a community mapping project which we are starting very soon and they go to the state house here in Massachusetts to speak to local representatives as well and they're on social media so you can the little cards I gave out it's all their social media information you can follow them and see what kind of stuff they're up to and we

▶ 1:14:16 Speaker 3: have a lot of information on our website too like all the new slushes are up

▶ 1:14:23 Speaker 3: there so thank you so much for letting us thank you thank you for thank you for

▶ 1:14:26 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: informative presentation and now on discussion Alderman Zwirko as the maker of the order would you like to make a comment Thank You madam chair for the

▶ 1:14:35 Michael P. Zwirko: opportunity to speak on this order also to my fellow colleagues and not a voting member of this committee but I do appreciate the opportunity here so I did prepare some remarks it is my order I just wanted to read those and then I just have a few questions so first I wanted to take a little bit of time to talk about the opioid crisis I know that we just heard many of the statistics presented to us so apologies for any redundancies but this is an issue that affects not only Melrose but every city in town in the Commonwealth 75% of the municipalities in common the Commonwealth have experienced opioid related fatality 75% this issue is so devastating that two governors have spoken about it in the respective state of the state addresses Vermont's governor Peter Shumlin dedicated his entire state of the state last year to but in just last week, Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts, mentioned it in his. It has garnered attention from every DA, police station, and hospital. The AG has been restless in her battle to fight this epidemic. In short, everybody is doing something they can to turn the tide. Here in Motos, we are not immune to the scourge of this disease. Cars are broken into by addicts seeking valuables when they can pawn or sell items that they've stolen to get another fix. We read in the police logs that unresponsive bodies have been found. Just last week, Chief Lyle came before us to discuss the grant he received from Leahy to fund Narcan, which is an opioid inhibitor that reverses the effects of an overdose. The crisis is real and it is here. Two weeks ago during his inauguration speech, Mayor Dolan spoke of his support of a full-time substance abuse prevention coordinator position in the fiscal year 2017 budget. I was elated to hear of this and I am happy that the mayor is taking leadership on this issue. As you may know, Meadows currently has a substance abuse prevention coordinator, Jen however that position is funded primarily through grants and those grants are set to expire I believe in October of this year when they do so does the position and many of the programs that you just saw I believe we need a sustainable solution to effectively fight this epidemic I believe that one of those solution begins with making the substance abuse prevention coordinator a full-time position in fact just this past weekend I had the pleasure of attending my very first Massachusetts Municipal Association conference the opioid epidemic was widely discussed and there was even a breakout session dedicated to the problem each member was also given a copy of the MMA's report called opioid addiction and overdose prevention this was born out of a task force they created in 2014 to assist local officials with tools resources and information to help them combat this crisis this report was added to the order today most importantly the report included ten points for local leaders to implement as a helpful way to combat the crisis I just wanted to quickly read those ten points now. Number one, take the lead to increase public awareness and engagement. Two, designate a municipal point person on substance abuse prevention. Three, encourage intra-community regional and statewide collaboration. Four, develop a one-page resource guide for families and those seeking treatment or assistance. Five, pilot initiative innovative programs based on local needs. Six, publicize the Good Samaritan law. Seven, partner with schools to implement programs aimed at prevention eight create prevention curriculum and education programs nine provide first responders with Narcan to prevent overdose deaths and ten create safe disposal sites in your community for the discarding of prescription drugs now as you've heard already tonight we

▶ 1:18:05 Michael P. Zwirko: do many of these but there's still work to be done at the conference former mayor McGlynn of Medford said that it is so important to have a program in place because addicts parents and citizens need to have access to resources that can help them the program needs to be an end-to-end solution and have prevention intervention and support as its cornerstones he forcefully said that this is our fault if we do not have a program I take this issue seriously and personally I believe it is my fault if I do not do all that I can to try to fight for resources to help people on this issue in fact I almost lost three close friends because of this terrible problem and I'm glad that all three are not only in recovery but leading healthy lives and also giving back to their communities to help others who are facing addiction in closing I simply wanted to say that I filed this order to get the word out about the issue and to advertise the need to make this position full-time I hope that those who are listening at home understand the value in having this position within our city and should they have concerns or questions about the opioid crisis and other substance abuse issues we have resources that are available to you I look forward to further discussion on this order and I thank you madam chair

▶ 1:19:12 Michael P. Zwirko: for allowing me to speak so those are my prepared remarks I do appreciate both coming here tonight especially on quick notice I'm happy that the committee's taking this up you know most of this is really just public outreach I'm very fearful that as you had highlighted the death rates in 2014 it seemed that Melrose death rate rose by I believe 33 percent in the past year and we're seeing similar things and a lot of attention across the state in the country is focused on this this crisis so it's just something that I really think that we also can't stand idly by when I do believe we have funding that will be soon expiring on this so I'm appreciative of the efforts that will be made and I also just wanted to say a question that the reason you provide a lot of information and coordination within the schools but it doesn't stop there correct I mean this could anybody that has any type of hope to be seen as

▶ 1:20:05 Speaker 3: a resource to the entire community and we we do get phone calls and definitely have work and been working closely with the police especially lately to help individuals you know move on to the track of getting into treatment and what

▶ 1:20:20 Michael P. Zwirko: age group is really affected by these prescription drugs and heroin generally

▶ 1:20:25 Speaker 3: speaking it's all age groups it really it shows no discrimination of age typically the deaths are you know mid to late 20s almost almost all Caucasian and

▶ 1:20:42 Speaker 3: a high rate of males but the females unfortunately are catching up generally

▶ 1:20:50 Michael P. Zwirko: speaking what socioeconomic class is affected by this every single one

▶ 1:20:53 Speaker 3: absolutely again shows no discrimination of race of gender of socioeconomic status it's a it's it's something that affects every one of us and every even if we may not know someone personally maybe we're afraid of our car being broken into maybe we're afraid of our of our child finding a used needle in the playground so every one of us as a resident has a stake in this and of the

▶ 1:21:27 Michael P. Zwirko: communities that you mentioned that are in the partnership do those communities have a full-time position for a substance abuse prevention coordinator

▶ 1:21:34 Speaker 3: for do Stoneham is applying they actually received an earmark so they have a part-time position right now only 10 hours a week they're reapplying for their grant so we're hopeful that they'll be able to hire a full-time position and Malden as well they're they're forming a coalition it's getting stronger you have to be a coalition a formal coalition for over or at least a year before you can apply for the drug free communities grant and Malden did actually just receive a grant of federal money through the state that is just going to be focusing on prescription drug use prevention so they're they're doing they're taking a lot of big strides in Malden as well then I just

▶ 1:22:24 Michael P. Zwirko: had one question on the expiring grid said I have that correct are they expired will they accept to expire this October or is that gonna be sunsetting

▶ 1:22:34 Speaker 3: later on thank you that was all the questions that I had I appreciate thank

▶ 1:22:48 Gail Infurna: you madam chair thank you just a quick question you stated earlier that you had 17 uses of for the not can I believe that's the number I'm not sure if it's

▶ 1:22:56 Gail Infurna: whatever the number is and I might have asked this this came up with the chief but I think it's it's an important fact that do you keep track of if any of

▶ 1:23:08 Speaker 3: those are repeaters the the police yeah yes the police do yeah because I don't

▶ 1:23:13 Gail Infurna: know if he had that answer but I think it's an important fact to to see if people are just using the knock-in as like well I'll do something and I know know this I'm not being available for me and if that is not preventing the usage in a sense of the word so I think it's an important preventing death right

▶ 1:23:38 Speaker 3: right and that's most important to you know maybe it's not that day that they're able to get into treatment but maybe that one time that they are in our can for the second time sure might be that the time when they are sure or the

▶ 1:23:50 Speaker 6: fourth time because it takes multiple times to be recidivism before before it

▶ 1:23:58 Speaker 6: sticks it's not it's a process you build up resistance to Narcan yes okay you can

▶ 1:24:05 Robert A. Boisselle: get that over the cup you can get that in the drugstore is that correct you

▶ 1:24:09 Speaker 3: know all of our local pharmacies and we've been working closely with them to make sure that they have these resources to share with people who do come in for Narcan and that they have a demo kit so they can show the families or user or friends of users how to use the Narcan thank you it's only use it has no other

▶ 1:24:29 Speaker 3: side effects or use except only to take the opioids off of the brain that's its only use so if you or I did it right now it would have no effect and if a person does another kind of drug say cocaine it would not have any effect to bring them

▶ 1:24:48 Speaker 10: out of that kind of an overdose. Thank you.

▶ 1:24:50 Gail Infurna: Thank you. And really, I appreciate and thank you for all the work that you have done of this, and as we can see, there is still work to be done. Absolutely. So I certainly will support this going forward.

▶ 1:25:05 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Next up we have Alderman Medeiros, please.

▶ 1:25:08 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank you. I just wanna take a minute, because you're all here, and it's very rare we see you all together, and thank you for all that you do. It's extraordinarily important work. We all know no matter what happens, it's so important to prevent children, adults,

▶ 1:25:29 Monica C. Medeiros: from using for the first time. And what you do working in the schools is so critical. Unfortunately, I can't say that it's almost, but that it actually happened that I've lost my classmates overdose deaths from here in Melrose and it's it's heartbreaking and it's

▶ 1:25:52 Monica C. Medeiros: heartbreaking to watch people and families be torn apart by this so anything you know that you can be done to prevent it is so worthwhile and I just really want to thank you guys for what you do and you know and ask you

▶ 1:26:09 Monica C. Medeiros: know what what can we do here from this side I mean I know some of it is it's it's budgetary concerns and you know as much as we'd like to we we don't out really out create the document what kinds of things can we do as aldermen to

▶ 1:26:28 Speaker 3: to help I think helping with the awareness about all the resources that are out there or just knowing what we do as a coalition to be able to share that with your constituents is so so helpful as much work as we try to do to get our names out there we know people still some people still have no idea what the coalition is or what are what they do so any promotion is huge helping us get these resource guides out there the parent guides I think also attending

▶ 1:26:58 Speaker 6: events because just you're just having your presence there sends the message we're going to be doing you know because we're losing our major funding source and and having a full-time person is is crucial it's vital actually but we haven't talked at all about any expenses that go along with that person so we're gonna be trying to do some fundraising to try to help support some of that but we're going to need municipal support to pay for just some of the not-so-sexy but expenses that go along with having the position I mean we we've been paying for things for other departments like the police department's tips line so we're

▶ 1:27:43 Speaker 6: gonna need funding and it doesn't matter to me whether it's in the police budget or our budget or the mayor's budget but there are other expenses that we've been doing that we're gonna need to pick up so we're gonna need to find a format to be able to include that you know in the budget process before it gets to you it because you're obviously the final part but there's a lot of work before

▶ 1:28:11 Monica C. Medeiros: that so that's good and in lots of times tonight you prefer to the website the substance abuse coalition website is on the city of Melrose website so everybody at no no is at home that's www.cityofmelrose.org and thank you very much

▶ 1:28:31 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Thank you. Thank you. Alderman McAteer-Margolis. Oh thank you and you are

▶ 1:28:34 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: making a difference. I've sat in on a lot of meetings with you with you for many years and it's you know it's really apparent that you do make a difference in terms of prevention and I think we all owe you a great deal of thanks for that and for your dedication. Some of the grants that we've been getting we share with other communities. Do you see anything down the road that's coming to any of those other communities that we would still continue to receive funding

▶ 1:29:05 Speaker 6: from the Mopsi grant is the opiate grant they're all the grants now at least all

▶ 1:29:13 Speaker 4: the state grants are all regional they're not going to be giving

▶ 1:29:15 Speaker 6: communities you know individual community unless you like Springfield or Boston their own grant and so all the grants that we basically within our five communities basically try to take turns you know you're the lead on that one you

▶ 1:29:35 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: know I'll be the lead on this one do do most of the other communities fund their coordinators through the grants as well until they until they run out of

▶ 1:29:44 Speaker 6: money right yes reading lost their funding at one point and they picked it up through the town they got their funding back so they're on their last Brown so Winchester went through their funding years ago and now have to put it

▶ 1:30:01 Speaker 9: on the town budget so part-time I think right yeah right but these these DFC

▶ 1:30:02 Speaker 6: grants aren't meant to be forever they're meant to be seed money to get us up and running and institutionalized in the community to do and then it is the community's responsibility we haven't done our job after if after 10 years the community doesn't feel like it's important to continue that work I agree

▶ 1:30:29 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: but nevertheless it's always within that 10 years we have had a huge you know switch over to opiate addictions which 10 years ago we weren't talking about at those meetings not very much anyways and so you know my my question I think it would just be helpful to know before we begin the budget process what other communities are actually funding in their budget so that we can say look you know this is what other communities are doing this is what we need to do to keep our numbers where they are or get them better yeah most of these communities

▶ 1:31:09 Speaker 6: are all still have their grant funding right so they don't fund it through the budget the exception being the city of Medford and which just created a full-time substance abuse position that is city funded city funded okay for

▶ 1:31:26 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: medica they've used up their DFC funding okay and the other resource that I think and you did mention Hallmark Health in the hospital and the the addiction unit for newborns, which attracts a very large circle of patients because of its empathetic care. So it's not just all Melrose moms who are going there.

▶ 1:31:50 Speaker 3: Certainly not. From what I understand. No, it's all the towns at Hallmark Health Services. But Hallmark Health gained a reputation of being respectful and nice to the women who came in. So word gets around, because unfortunately that is not the norm whatsoever. The stigma of substance abuse addiction not only is so strong anyway, but to top it off, being pregnant, it's a lot of stigma that these women were dealing with. So Melrose-Wakefield Hospital unwittingly became the experts in this. And people come from all over, not only the Hallmark Health Service area.

▶ 1:32:36 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: And with the new legislation that the governor is proposing and the legislators are discussing, in terms of referrals from emergency rooms and additional services through emergency departments. Do you foresee any additional funding coming from those?

▶ 1:33:00 Speaker 3: I think the state is going to definitely be putting out different funding to be able to implement all the recommendations that are going to be coming out and have already come out, for sure.

▶ 1:33:12 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: Well, once again, thank you for all your hard work. I know you're always somewhere doing something good, and we really appreciate it.

▶ 1:33:20 Speaker 3: Well, we have a wonderful group, you included, you know we couldn't we couldn't do it without all the community support and all the involvement of all the different parts of the community so thank you all

▶ 1:33:33 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you thank you are there any other voting members of the committee wishing to speak I mean any non voting members open to recommend motion to place on

▶ 1:33:46 Michael P. Zwirko: file I'm sorry I forgot to say this earlier there's a I just want to give a shout out to Jen there's actually a paper that's attached attachment D that she authored so I just the testament to her hard work just wanted to let the committee know and the members at home that there is a interesting position paper policy paper that was authored by Jen and others that work for the Melrose of the substance abuse prevention coalition so I just wanted to

▶ 1:34:10 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: bring that to the attention that's all so we have actually two motions on the

▶ 1:34:17 Speaker 5: on the table right now I'm sorry go ahead second so we first heard a motion to

▶ 1:34:22 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: recommend from Alderman Boisselle yes do we have a second motion fails motion to

▶ 1:34:31 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: place on file we have a motion to place on file from Alderman Inferna second seconded by Alderman McAteer-Margolis all in favor any opposed no with one opposed, the motion passes to place this order on file. Do we have a motion to