Michael Fine – RI Future

October 17, 2016October 21, 2016

First Neighborhood Health Station breaks ground in Central Falls

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Think of it as the “Deepwater Wind” of health care: Innovation, starting in Rhode Island, that could be a model for the world. That’s how revolutionary the concept of the Neighborhood Health Station could be, and the first one is being rolled out in Central Falls.

Perhaps overshadowed by a visit from actress Viola Davis, the groundbreaking for the new Neighborhood Health Station in Central Falls heralds the beginning of a new paradigm in health care, one meant to serve the needs of the community, not the convenience of the provider. The Blackstone Valley Community Health Care (BVCHC) Neighborhood Health Station will be located at 1000 Broad St in Central Falls, and will offer primary care, walk-in primary care, dental care, a pharmacy, physical therapy, pediatric care, occupational therapy, mental health services, Ob/Gyn services, radiology and more; serving over 14,000 patients and 50,000 visits a year.

Upon completion in 2018, the city of Central Falls will benefit from having “comprehensive services offered under one roof, where clinical professionals can collaborate face-to-face for improved care coordination” and “same-day sick appointments with convenient hours (8 am to 8 pm) on week days and additional weekend hours, enabling individuals and families to access health and medical services close to home, when it is most convenient for them.”

BVCHC hopes to cover 90 percent of Central Falls residents. “Using medical records to identify at-risk patients, we will continue to collaborate using community resources and with the new health building, we are confident that we can improve public outcomes,” said BVCHC Senior Clinical and Population Health Officer Michael Fine, M.D., who now also serves as Health Policy Advisor to the City of Central Falls.

Based on public meetings with residents, three public health priorities were identified: the community wanted their kids to be safe in school, they needed access to a gymnasium and they wanted better access to primary care.

Based on this input, the team designing the center identified five short term goals. Pregnancy prevention: BVCHC partnered with the school system and Brown University’s Residency Program in Family Medicine to create a school-based health clinic at Central Falls High School to bring prevention and same-day clinical care to the adolescents of Central Falls and to reduce the rate of adolescent pregnancy through education and prevention programs. (Central Falls’ high school pregnancy is 4X the state average).
Multidisciplinary management of individual cases: participants in this collaboration come from all facets of the community, including doctors, dentists, substance abuse, mental health, home care, housing, legal, needle exchange, immigration, transportation, social service, insurers and hospitals. Together, they meet bi-weekly to create customized plans to organize care for the people in Central Falls who are at the highest medical and social risk.
Mitigation of EMS use: people who use the Central Falls EMS more than four times a year have been identified, outreach has been made and they have been introduced to BVCHC where they can get help with medical, mental health and substance abuse issues and where referrals can be made for housing that they might need.
Access to exercise opportunities: The mayor now leads city walks to get people moving every two weeks (organized by Parks and Rec, publicized by BVCHC and housing authority and staffed by both parks and rec and BVCHC). A regular schedule of free busing from Central Falls (three pickup sites at Notre Dame and the housing authority) to the Pawtucket YMCA and to the Lincoln YMCA (for access to swimming pools) was introduced.
Identification of needs within public housing: the city’s community health worker in public housing now brings individual situations and stories to the multi-disciplinary team about tenants, primarily the elderly who are most at risk, to the team to find solutions to their needs.

Innovation is desperately needed in health care. When we as a nation inevitably pass some form of “Medicare for All” single payer health care system it will be vitally important to keep costs down and people healthy. Neighborhood Health Stations point the way.

“None of us,” said Dr. Michael Fine, former head of the Rhode Island Department of Health, “have ever lived in a place where it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, black or white, whether you speak English or Spanish or another language, whether you walk, take the bus or drive a car, where it doesn’t matter if you have papers or not, whether you can read or not, whether you walk on two feet, or walk with assistance… we’ve never seen a place in which everyone matters, in which we look out for everyone. Whether they came to the health center this year or not, whether they do what doctors recommend or not, whether they choose to live differently or not, we stand here today with a different vision: A vision of a place in which everyone matters. It’s a vision of what Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. called ‘a beloved community.’”

Below, watch Dr. Fine, former head of the RI Department of Health, explain the importance of Neighborhood Health Stations.

April 22, 2016April 23, 2016

The health consequences of losing power

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The health consequences of losing your gas or electric power are actually pretty obvious and pretty logical once you think for a minute about the many things Rhode Islanders use their electric power and gas to do. Electricity runs our light after dark and, with gas powers our heat and heats our hot water, so if you lose power you lose light and heat and hot water. Electricity powers air conditioners and refrigerators, so if you lose power you lose cooling in the summer and the ability to keep anything that needs to cooled – milk and butter and meet and fresh vegetables, but also insulin and many liquid antibiotics. In most of rural RI, in Exeter and Green and Wakefield and Foster and Scituate and Gloucester and West Greenwich and lots of other places, electricity runs the pumps that drive all our water, so when you lose electricity you lose running water all together. And electricity drives many electric devices that help maintain the health and lives of the chronically ill – ventilators and oxygen concentrators, nebulizers, CPAP and BIPAP machines, home dialysis units and intravenous fluid pumps, hospital beds and all sorts of lights, meters and monitors.

There are over 10,000 Rhode Islanders enrolled in the Rhode Island Special Needs Registry and they are all at risk from losing power. If you lose your power and you are on a ventilator, you’ll die in minutes or hours. If you lose your power and use an Oxygen concentrator or CPAP or BIPAP, you’ll get sicker and could die or may need hospitalization in days or weeks. If you lose your power and you have asthma, you won’t be able to use your nebulizer and you could die or need hospitalization. If you lose your light you lose the ability to see and follow directions so you can’t take prescribed medicine after dark, and if you lose your power and you are depressed or have a thought disorder, the darkness can become threatening and worsen the trouble you have with thinking and anxiety. If you are elderly and are unstable on your feet, losing your light means you can’t even walk in your house at night. If you have or are prone to any kind of infection, losing hot water means you can’t bath regularly and are at increased risk from skin, urinary and other sorts of infections, which can be life threatening in people with diabetes or with any disease that lowers your resistance to infection. If you live in a rural area and depend on well water, an electric cut-off means you can’t flush your toilet or wash your hands. Try staying free from infection, or controlling any chronic disease under those conditions.

There is very strong medical evidence that many elderly and infirm will die in heat waves, so that lack of air conditioning in the summer is toxic to people who are elderly or who have serious lung or heart problems, and the lack of electricity puts people on a ventilator at immediate jeopardy and the lack of electricity puts those using oxygen and those Rhode Islanders using CPAP and BIPAP at significant risk.

Interestingly, we don’t know as much about health risks of extended exposures to cold temperatures, expect to know that the elderly and infirm are at significant additional risk from extremes of temperature. I thought about that for a long time, because it doesn’t make intuitive sense – we all know that being out in the cold lowers your resistance and you can get a cold and then catch your death of pneumonia, right? And we know the one year mortality for the street sleeping homeless is about 30 percent, higher than end stage heart failure and many types of aggressive cancer – that about a third of people who sleep on the street die every year, and the street sleeping homeless experience cold temperatures though they are beset by many other kinds of health risks as well. So what gives about the lack of medical evidence and public health data about cold? Then I realized that no civilized country lets people sit in cold houses any more. So when there isn’t widespread cold exposure, we can’t study it. Maybe there is no evidence about cold because when people are cold they can put on lots of layers of clothing and that protects them. Or maybe, just maybe, the number of people exposed is small enough, thank god, that we haven’t been able to study the problem with scientific precision.

And that also means that the moratorium on utility cutoffs in the winter – that the law says people’s utilities can’t be cut off from November 15 to April 15 if they have a doctor’s letter, actually makes no sense. Elderly Rhode Islanders and Rhode Islanders with medical problems are at increased risk in the summer. So to me that means we need a moratorium on all utility cutoffs for people who are elderly or have medical problems, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

One more thing. Every time someone with a medical problem gets their power turned off, they are way more likely to end up in the hospital. The hospitalization is going to cost 10 to 50 thousand dollars or more. You know who pays for that hospitalization? Most of those folks have Medicare or Medicaid. So National Grid doesn’t pay for that hospitalization. You and I pay for it. It comes out of tax dollars. National Grid, a regulated monopoly in Rhode Island protects their bottom line, but you and I pay. And the money we spend? That’s money that we could and should be spending on education, safe and healthy housing, the environment and recreational opportunities for kids and young adults in our communities . So who really wins and who really loses, when National Grid cuts people off and the State of Rhode Island’s Division of Public Utilities lets them do that?

Like I said, the medical and health consequences of utility cut-offs are pretty obvious. If people who are ill don’t have electric power, hot water, light, heat and air-conditioning, they are going to get sicker. Some may die. And cutting off utilities to people who are ill is illegal in Rhode Island. But National Grid does that anyway, and the Division of Public Utilities lets them. Outraged, like I am? Then do one or more of these 5 things:

If you are interested in getting involved –come to the monthly LIFELINE PROJECT meetings– the FIRST Wednesday of every month at 6 pm at the George Wiley Center (32 East Ave) in Pawtucket. Next meeting is MAY 4th at 6 pm.
If you work at an agency that assist consumers – contact us so that we can set up a training for your staffabout the protections available under the law for medically vulnerable consumers. Contact Keally Cieslik or Camilo Viveiros
If you are angry and outraged -write to the Division of Public Utilities and tell them so! You can also write to the AG’s office in the State and/or your elected officials. Addresses are available here today on our fliers! (fliers available in the lobby). Call the Governor’s office and the Speaker’s office and the Senate President’s Office. When the CEO of National Grid calls the Governor or Speaker or Senate President, they take his call. Don’t you think they should take your call as well? You vote. National Grid has to buy their influence.
DONATE –the George Wiley Center and the Center for Justice need resources to continue doing this work. You can make a donation today by cash or check.

This is still a democracy. Let’s all speak up together and make National Grid respect the law.

October 21, 2015

PUC protesters repelled by bureaucratic disinterest

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More than 30 people entered the RI Public Utilities Commission (PUC) yesterday to demand an end to the epidemic of unfair utility shut-offs. Many in attendance have been victims of these shut-offs, even though they complied with the law and produced letters from their doctors indicating that their health would be seriously compromised by shut-offs. The protest was lead by the George Wiley Center and culminated in an action where dozens of protesters entered PUC offices to deliver a letter to the PUC board.

No one from the board would consent to meet with the protesters. Instead, Kevin Lynch, who works for the PUC, fed the crowd bureaucratic folderol for 30 minutes. (Readers with a peculiar masochistic streak can watch the entirety of that interaction in the last video below.) Mind you, this was after making the protesters wait in the tiny receiving room/staircase for nearly ten minutes. Ultimately, the letter was time stamped by a clerk before being filed away unread by board members.

Those among the protesters with specific issues left with those issues unresolved.

Though Lynch was professional and polite, he did nothing to resolve any issues that anyone in the crowd brought up. At first Lynch tried to dismiss the protesters by saying that since the George Wiley Center and the Rhode Island Center for Justice was suing over the issue, he would not be able comment, but Camilo Viveiros, lead organizer of the George Wiley Center, countered that the George Wiley center was not a plaintiff in the suit.

According to a George Wiley Center press release, “Every year tens of thousands of households in Rhode Island experience the stress of utility service termination due to unaffordable bills. It is shocking that in many of these homes live people struggling with medical conditions. This injustice is due to a loophole that allows the state’s Division of Public Utilities to grant National Grid permission to shut off households, even when their medical status is on file.”

The Wiley Center says such shut-off are, “inhumane and a threat to public health and safety.”

“Stopping utility shut-offs on people with medical conditions has been recommended by medical professionals who seek to protect and improve health,” says the George Wiley Center, “With access to utility service patients can be warm or cool as needed, see and not stumble in the dark, refrigerate medications, use nebulizers and oxygen tanks, take a warm bath. When service is shut off, basic needs are not met and medical conditions will likely worsen, sometimes leading to hospitalization and other serious consequences.”

Alan Costa has a medical condition that literally stops his heart a hundred times a minute. Without electricity, he dies. He fell behind on his electrical bills while undergoing two complex medical procedures in a very short period of time. He wonders why Governor Gina Raimondo doesn’t use her executive power, as the person who nominates people to the PUC board, to push for enforcement of laws that protect the health and well being of Rhode Island citizens instead on the profits of National Grid.

Annabel Alexander is 77 years old and suffers from a long list of ailments. (She showed me the list!) She has had her heat and her electricity turned off, and sleeps in her overcoat in her bed at night. National Grid will not make a deal with her to catch up on her bills for less than 50 percent of her income. “It’s a damn shame,” she says, “that we have to suffer while they are up there getting paychecks and living in mansions!”

In the next two videos we meet Kevin, who survived the Station Night Club fire. He pulled people out of that building that night, but today suffers from post traumatic stress and other ailments. On Saturday night he ran out of oil. On Monday morning his electricity was turned off. He needs to keep his medication chilled. He was promised that his condition would prevent a shut-off.

“I feel I’m being punished now, for things that people called me a hero for.”

Kevin was invited into the offices to see if there was a possibility of resolving his issue. He left disappointed, his case still pending.

Diane has asked her daughter for help with her bills. National Grid wants to take more than half her paycheck to turn her power back on. She has a host of ailments, and told the crowd that people with arthritis need a hot shower, as opposed to washing yourself of in water you’ve heated up in your microwave…

Camilo Viveiros, lead organizer of the George Wiley Center, rallied the crowd and explained the costs of these utility shut-offs in terms of human misery, but also in terms of dollars wasted.

Here is the full letter the protesters attempted to deliver to the PUC board, and it was signed by a long list of health care professionals, including Dr. Michael Fine, MD, former RI State Director of Health.

I’m writing to express my support for the Lifeline Project’s work to improve protection from utility termination for medically vulnerable households in our State. Unaffordable utility bills are especially prevalent among low-income medically vulnerable households because these households lack the financial resources to make ends meet and often require utility service for ongoing treatment of chronic illness. As a medical professional, I see first-hand the way that termination of utility service can lead to disastrous consequences for families such as an unexpected trip to the emergency room, the loss of a housing voucher, or eviction. Households with a permanently disabled individual, or a person with a pre-existing, serious medical condition such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, or diabetes, are among the most at risk because these conditions require electric medical devices or refrigerated medication.

The Lifeline Project is a collaboration between the Rhode Island Center for Justice and the George Wiley Center, which aims to protect and expand the rights of medically vulnerable households facing gas and electric utility shut off through the provision of legal assistance and community organizing. The Lifeline Project has identified a host of routinized, unfair and illegal practices and procedures on the part of the public utility company, National Grid, and the state regulatory agencies, the Division of Public Utilities and the Public Utilities Commission with respect to residential utility termination. These practices need to be fixed and in the meantime, medically vulnerable households need protection from shut-off.

I am specifically writing to support the Lifeline Project’s current campaign to challenge these illegal practices and urge National Grid and the state regulatory agencies to meet the following demands:

1. A one-year moratorium on termination for all accounts that are coded as ‘medical’.

2. The engagement of an independent third party monitor to review the Division of Public Utility’s approval of petitions for permission to terminate for all accounts coded as medical. The monitor will be selected by a joint committee composed of members of the George Wiley Center, the medical community, the Department of Health and the Public Utilities Commission.

3. The Public Utilities Commission immediately begin requiring data submissions from National Grid that are consistent with those requirements placed on the company in Massachusetts, as per the George Wiley Center’s formal request from March of 2015.

4. The Public Utilities Commission immediately begin accepting and thoroughly reviewing petitions for emergency restoration and providing timely responses to each request.

As a medical professional in this state, I understand the dire need to protect these consumers from the dangerous impacts of utility shutoff.

April 2, 2015October 17, 2016

Neighborhood Health Stations are better than cutting Medicaid

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Imagine a plan sitting at the RI Department of Health (RIDOH) that would reduce health care spending in Rhode Island by 15 to 30 percent. A plan with the added benefit of improving health care outcomes “with a cutting edge technology that brings every Rhode Islander into world class care – as they need it, where they need it, when they need it, in a way that builds community instead of building profit for others.”

Neighborhood Health Stations, developed by the RIDOH under the leadership of Dr. Michael Fine, is that plan.

Neighborhood Health Stations are “basically community hospitals without walls,” says Dr. Fine in conversation with Richard Asinof of ConvergenceRI. Dr. Fine planned to build one station for every 12,000 Rhode Islanders, between 75 and 100 such stations in all. The first one was to be built in Central Falls.

Neighborhood Health Stations would locate pediatricians, internists, family physicians, dentists, nurse practitioners, licensed and registered nurses, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, mental health and social workers, physical therapists and occupational therapists, pharmacists, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, registered dietitians, home health workers, promotoras, health coaches, navigators and other healthcare workers under one roof, in a facility that would also offer programs such as “nutrition courses, Zumba classes, or group counseling sessions.”

According to Dr. Fine, if we implemented this plan, we could shrink the hospital system in our state. “When you build out the full delivery system of one neighborhood health station for every community of 12,000 people,” says Dr. Fine, “it is very likely that we can reduce the total number of hospital beds by 40 to 45 percent. That means dropping [the number of hospital beds in Rhode Island] by about 900 beds.”

Governor Gina Raimondo’s budget proposes cutting $88 million from Medicaid’s $2.7 billion in spending, a 3 to 6 percent reduction. Since “Reinventing Medicaid” is being presented as an answer to an imminent disaster, improving the quality of health care or paying adequate wages to health care workers is taking a back seat to saving money.

That’s a shame, because a fully realized health care system of the kind imagined by Dr. Fine would attract business and investment to Rhode Island, while draconian cuts in services to our most vulnerable will have the opposite effect. If we could build Neighborhood Health Stations and make them work, “then health care spending becomes a business magnet. People come and locate businesses here, just because of our health care,” says Dr. Fine.

It’s a great idea, but not one that’s likely to happen. Since Dr. Fine’s departure, Neighborhood Health Stations seem in jeopardy. The new head of the RIDOH, Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, has yet to comment on the plan. But a more immediate reason for the plan’s quiet demise can be intuited.

“…if I have had one failure [while serving as director of the R.I. Department of Health],” said Dr. Fine, “if I want to be self-critical, [it’s] that I haven’t made it clear enough to people that we don’t have a problem with insurance, the problem is insurance. That thinking, that insurance, as a financial mechanism, can impact health, is a fundamental, categorical mistake.”

Dr. Fine saw his Neighborhood Health Stations as saving money by cutting out for profit insurance companies, and actually reducing the size of hospitals. The Reinventing Medicaid working group is comprised of a diverse group of people, but for-profit insurers and health-care providers have a prominent seat at the table. Timothy Babineau, MD, president and CEO of Lifespan, Peter Andruszkiewicz, president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of RI and Helena Foulkes, executive vice president of CVS Health and president of CVS/pharmacy will ensure that their corporate, for-profit interests are protected.

To Dr. Fine, Neighborhood Health Stations are the future of health care. “…if we don’t do it, all we’re doing is perpetuating a costly infrastructure that doesn’t work.” An infrastructure that will remain immeasurably profitable to those sitting at the top of certain health care empires.

The “artwork was created by Roger Williams University students, in consultation with students at Rhode Island College School of Nursing, to illustrate how Neighborhood Health Stations could enhance well-being in Rhode Island communities.”

February 25, 2015February 26, 2015

Experts agree: Criminalizing HIV transmission a ‘backwards step’

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If freshman legislator Robert Nardolillo accomplished anything with the introduction of legislation that seeks to criminalize the transmission of HIV, it was to demonstrate the hard won strength and unity of the LGBTQ and medical community in resisting a return to the ignorance, fear and stigma attached to the disease in the 1980s.

Though Nardolillo, in presenting his bill to the House Judiciary Committee claims to have done research on the issue, it became immediately obvious that he had not talked to any of the assembled experts in public health policy in the room last night. If anything, it looks like Nardolillo’s research amounted to little more than copying section 44-29-140 of a draconian and unhelpful South Carolina law passed in 1988, at the height of AIDS hysteria in the United States.

Nardolillo, who did not respond to my request to answer questions before the hearings, did speak to Zack Ford at ThinkProgress and when confronted with studies demonstrating the dangers of this kind of legislation, showed himself to be impervious to reason, saying,

‘Have I read the research? I did,’ Nardolillo confirmed, saying that he still felt that HIV was too serious not to prosecute in a distinct way.

Stephen Hourahan, Executive Director of AIDS Project RI strongly disagreed. The legislation’s passage, said Hourahan, “would mark a backwards step” in dealing with HIV. Since the bill criminalizes knowingly transmitting HIV, the bill will, “privilege the ignorance of not knowing your status.” We don’t want the mantra to be, “Take the test and risk arrest,” said Hourhan, adding that such a bill would create a “viral underclass” and should be opposed by all.

Paul Fitzgerald, executive director AIDS Care Ocean State, echoed Hourahan’s comments, adding, “I don’t believe that it’s smart” to pass such a bill.

Anthony Maselli, a healthcare worker and LGBTQ activist, said that transmission of HIV with “malicious intent is improbable and rare.” The law, says Maselli, “adds insult to injury” and is “a slap in the face.” At the conclusion of his excellent testimony, Maselli was greeted with applause from those crowded into the room.

Anthony DeRose, representing the Rhode Island Democratic Party LGBTQ Caucus and the Young Democrats of Rhode Island pointed out that as a country, we are in the process of rolling back similar laws. Laws such as the one Nardolillo introduced, said DeRose, are “outdated.”

Dr. Amy Nunn of Brown University, who I featured in a piece back in December during a State House event held for World AIDS Day, said that passage of such a law would set back decades of work here in Rhode Island. She called Dr. Michael Fine of the Rhode Island Department of Health a visionary for suggesting that Rhode island might be the first state to eliminate HIV transmission through sound public policy.

Rounding out the night’s testimony was Miriam Hospital’s Kristen Pfeiffer, chair of the RI HIV Prevention Coalition and Ben Klein, a Senior Attorney at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders. Both were vociferous and forceful in firmly opposing the legislation.

In the face of such strong opposition, it seems extremely unlikely that this legislation will advance out of committee.

January 9, 2015January 9, 2015

“Addiction is a Disease. Recovery is Possible.” campaign launches today

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The Departments of Health (HEALTH), Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) and the Anchor Recovery Community Center held a press conference today to announce the launch of a new media campaign, “Addiction is a Disease. Recovery is Possible.”

The ads cover television, radio, billboards and the sides of buses. There is a website. The powerful ads feature eight local men and women who tell their stories of addiction and recovery. Though many share their personal stories of addiction, one woman, Elise, speaks from the point of view of a mother who lost two sons to overdose.

Holly Cekala, executive director of RICAREs (the group that staged a “Die-In” outside the State House earlier this week) pointed out the wide range of ages, races and economic level of those in recovery and told me that the community she serves, and is a part of, is the most diverse community there is. Addiction, it seems, does not discriminate.

Anchoring the event and introducing the speakers was Jim Gillen, Director of Recovery Services at the Providence Center / Anchor Community Center. Gillen has been in long term recovery since 1998 and “As a result, my life is banging, let me tell you,” he said to the audience, “It’s the reason that I’m employable, it’s the reason that I pay taxes, that I drive with a license and insurance… and I vote.”

Dr. Michael Fine, director of HEALTH, said that the point of this campaign is to let “every single Rhode islander know that addiction is a disease.” This is a “campaign to bring Rhode Islanders together.”

There were 232 overdose deaths in Rhode Island last year. People have already died this year. “With each death,” says Dr. Fine, “a piece of Rhode Island dies.”

Dr. Fine revealed that another aspect of this campaign is designed to raise awareness among doctors and others with the power to prescribe opiates about their responsibility in curbing this epidemic, as well as bringing more accountability to the pharmacies that fill the prescriptions. “We need to change our prescribing behavior,” said Dr. Fine.

Linda Mahoney of BHDDH sees this campaign as a means of combating the stigma that addiction carries. She commended the eight people appearing in the ads for having the courage to face this stigma head on in an effort to change the hearts and minds of the wider community. It takes courage, said Mahoney, “to come out professionally and publicly and say, ‘I know I was sick. I got better and there is still work to do.’”

“The idea is to overcome stigma, to treat addiction as a disease like any other disease,” said Mahoney.

Jonathan, one of the eight featured in the ads, started with a joke, “When I was told that this campaign would mean having my face plastered on the side of a bus, I said that this wouldn’t be the first time I was plastered on a bus.” But he soon turned serious. His was a story of addiction that lead to crime and estrangement from friends and family.

It ultimately led to his death, but he was saved by an injection of Narcan. Waking up in the hospital, Jonathan’s first thought was to score more drugs, but he learned that there were people out there who “loved me more than I loved myself.”

Jonathan has been in recovery for 19 months. He is repairing his relationship with his family, has a job and is paying the debts he accrued during his addiction. Still, addiction haunts him. On Wednesday he attended a funeral for a 22-year old friend, one of the first overdose deaths in 2015.

Elise spoke next. She is a nurse who has worked in recovery since 1998. Her son Paul died at the age of 22 in 2004, and her son Teddy died at age 30 in 2010. “Who would have thought it would happen to me?” Elise asked, “You can’t have your blinders on.”

‘We can’t arrest ourselves out of this problem,” said Dr. Fine during the question and answer session, observing that addiction is a medical, not law enforcement problem. Jim Gillen, wrapping up the event, seemed to concur. “We may have lost the war on drugs,” he said, “but we will win the war on addiction.”

Below are all eight videos produced for the campaign.