“This Is Impacting All of Us": Nearly 1,000 Gather for BMC’s State-Wide Addiction Summit

Nearly 1,000 people gather in the DCU Center in Worcester for the second annual Together for Hope conference, Boston Medical Center’s two-day summit convening experts on substance use disorder. It’s almost twice as many people as at its inaugural conference last year in Roxbury, a neighborhood of Boston. And that’s intentional.

“We’re coming together at a critical juncture for our work. While there’s much to be done, we have begun to see progress in prevention of overdose deaths. We’re showing the nation that treatment and harm reduction work,” says Miriam Komaromy, MD, Executive Director of BMC’s Grayken Center for Addiction, in her welcome remarks. Komaromy acknowledges that while there has been progress, we are facing headwinds, and that continuing the push for progress will require collaboration.

“The need is greater than ever for us to come together as a community and strengthen our collective resolve to fight for what is right for ourselves, our institutions, and our patients,” she adds.

With that in mind, Komaromy encouraged attendees to network and form connections during dedicated breaks. Together for Hope convenes people all across the field of substance use disorder (SUD): physicians, nurses, harm reduction specialists, recovery coaches, outreach workers, community organizations, advocacy workers, policymakers, and, crucially, people with lived experience of addiction.

Important to the message of including everyone was an array of opening remarks alongside Komaromy—from Grayken Center’s Community Engagement Specialist Craig McClay, Worcester Mayor Joseph M. Petty, and Andrea Smith, Jodie Chapdelaine, and Bruce Curliss, all representatives of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Band. They welcomed attendees to their ancestral land and sang a song of prayer.

“Our ancestors have walked these lands for countless generations and their resilience guides us. We welcome you in that same spirit with open hearts and a shared commitment to creating space of healing, hope, and connection,” says Chapdelaine, Chair of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc Health Committee.

Keynote stirs audience to think of SUD’s impact

Keynote speaker Michael Curry, President and CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, stepped onto the stage last. He echoed the spirit of the opening remarks, and he reminded the audience of exactly why addressing SUD and overdoses requires a concerted group effort: SUD affects everyone.

“This doesn’t care if you’re young, middle-aged, or senior. It doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, conservative or progressive. It is of no significance that you graduated from Harvard, your status, your privilege, your perspective, your faith, your ideology, political affiliation, race or pronouns—it quite simply doesn’t matter,” he says. “It has the potential to destroy lives, families, and communities. This medical condition doesn’t just impact the person pinned under the weight of the disease, but it also impacts those who love them, those who rely on them, and those who need them to survive.”

Curry then shared a montage of deeply personal stories from his childhood, of the people who populated his life who lived with addiction.

The maltreatment and abuse of a neighborhood woman who Curry said lived with alcohol use disorder. His older sister who his mother would pray for every night. A neighbor who lived downstairs and treated him as a son, whose parties turned from revelry to fights.

Even in his youth, as someone who wasn’t using substances, these were the people who informed his understanding, who impacted his life, and who he still remembers today.

“Although I had never been drunk or high, I was familiar with the pain, the untreated trauma, the violence, the poverty, the racism, the food insecurity, the failing systems that were the backbones or the backstories of all those lives and so many others. The social determinants of addiction,” Curry says.

The implication is clear: We all have these stories, these people—substance use disorder affects all of us.

“Now,” he says, “let’s talk about hope.”

Echoing Komaromy’s welcome remarks, Curry recognized the progress we have made in preventing overdose deaths and treating SUD. He highlighted models of care that are working—including BMC’s model of integrated, office-based addiction treatment that is being expanded widely across community health centers. He also pushed the Together for Hope attendees to remain steadfast. Curry channeled Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first Black woman doctor of medicine in 1864.

“She said, ‘They seem to forget that there’s a cause for every ailment and it may be in their power to remove it.’”

It’s a phrase Curry repeats three times—a call to action for the addiction experts across the field in the room: Use this time to come together and push forward in ending stigma, closing gaps in SUD outcomes, and expanding access to care for all.

“Because this is impacting all of us and not just those with the addiction,” he says. “I know.”