Worcester Business Journal

6 Worcester Business Journal • February 15, 2016 www.wbjournal.com . March 19-April 16, 2016 Join us for the opening reception March 18 ArtsWorcester Worcester Center for Crafts 660 Main Street 25 Sagamore Road 6:00-8:00 pm 5:30-7:30 pm Awards, donated by Davis Art Gallery, will be announced at both galleries at 6:30 pm. ! Worcester Center for Crafts A collaboration to exhibit the next generation of regional artists WBJ 1-4 b page_NOW! quarter 2/3/16 1:26 PM Page 1 Calling all Worcester Business Journal Top 100 Employers! Girls Inc. of Worcester is celebrating its 100 years and we need your help to identify Girls Inc., Girls Club, and Camp Kinneywood alumni currently working in your companies. Girls Inc. of Worcester will feature your company in an advertisement published in the May 2016 Worcester Business Journal. Follow us on To help us in our search for alumni or for more information, please contact Anne McCarthy at amccarthy@girlsincworcester.org or 508.755.6455 x41. W hen Kelly McCausland was teaching yoga and mindful- ness at rehabilitation facili- ties, she had a lot of interactions with patients who believed in their sobriety, only to succumb to their addiction months or even weeks later. "When someone is standing on the steps of one of the local rehabs and looks me in the eye, and says, 'Kelly, I'm not going back to it,' he really believes it, and I know he believes it, but then he goes back to his hometown, and within a month I'm reading an obituary," McCausland said. With the belief that yoga and mind- fulness are essential to recovery for drug addicts and alcoholics, McCausland established Prana Recovery Centers, a Marlborough drug and alcohol treat- ment center focused on relapse preven- tion. The program is centered around six pillars of wellness, including mindful- ness, yoga and the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, to name a few. Prana is a new player in the addiction services nonprofit world, but it's an example of a program developed in response to the uphill battle against opi- oids being fought in Massachusetts and across the country. Healthcare, family services and youth development non- profits in Central Massachusetts have added staff and expanded programming as a response to the crippling epidemic. Unintentional opioid overdose deaths rose 65 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to the state public health department. Preliminary data tracking the first nine months of 2015 indicates that the epidemic's growth is showing no signs of slowing down. The start of a crisis Opioid is an overarching term refer- ring to medications that relieve pain. The issues with abuse and overdose came in the late 1990s when opioid drugs like morphine, oxycodone and codeine became popular for medical treatment and eventually started being overused, said Charles Faris, president and CEO of Worcester healthcare non- profit Spectrum Health Systems, Inc. As patients got more and more addict- ed to these prescription drugs, drug dealers on the street exploited the oppor- tunity to provide the same high at a frac- tion of the cost by making heroin cheap, Faris said. This contributed to the rise of the opioid crisis. Spectrum has always treated a dispro- portionate amount of opiate users, but Faris said the numbers have been grow- ing over the last decade. In response to higher demand for its services, Spectrum added six new outpatient facilities over the past two and a half years and will open three more this coming summer, though Faris would not say where. The company opened a new 250-bed inpa- tient facility in Westborough last year. Demand has been off the charts at all of Spectrum's six new outpatient facili- ties, Faris said. For example, at the Human service providers hire staff, expand offerings Opioid crisis creating nonprofit demand BY LAURA FINALDI Worcester Business Journal Staff Writer Charles Faris, president and CEO of Spectrum Health Systems, signs the final beam for the frame of his organization's new 100-bed residential treatment facility in Westborough.

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