Diverse Efforts To Fight Opioid Crisis In Massachusetts

ROXBURY (CBS) - The Dimock Center in Roxbury serves the community health needs of 19,000 people every year.

"I would say about 60-percent of our patients are Medicaid eligible so we primarily see people who are lower income" says President and CEO Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan.

Related: Opioid Recovery Resources

Minter-Jordan says addiction treatment and education is essential to the care offered.

"That we are educating patients and our families on what happens when Fentanyl is introduced into a neighborhood and the amount of increase that we see in overdoses in black and brown communities," she told WBZ-TV.

The Dimock Center offers residential and outpatient addiction treatment.  This year, they opened a renovated detox center that can now serve 4,000 patients a year. The program draws people from roughly 200 Boston area zip codes for treatment.

"We want to serve everyone, but we also want to make sure that being in Roxbury that we are serving those individuals from Roxbury and Mattapan and Jamaica Plain, individuals that are primarily underserved," Minter-Jordan said.

Further south in Brockton, another approach to recovery is underway.

The group at Stairway to Recovery is taking part in an "addiction 101" class, as part of the training to become a recovery coach.

"It is a community that is in pain. I've been there. I am a person in long term recovery" says program director Efrain Baez.

The recovery coach program is where recovering addicts like Darren Washington use their experience to help others put their lives back together.

"Knowing the hurt, the ups and downs, the pain they go through, helping them get through that" Washington told WBZ.

Kimberly Jones overdosed on heroin and Fentanyl and had to be revived. With her career as a recovery coach, she's determined to give back.

"I am walking evidence that you can get clean, you can get better and you can start your life over" says Jones.

This is the latest story in a series of WBZ-TV reports on confronting the opioid crisis in Massachusetts.