Against the backdrop of dark invocations and graceless sound bites swirling around Donald Trump’s Inauguration and his administration’s clumsy and antagonistic assumption of the levers of government, there is much local news this week to give hope, and heart, for surviving the new regime’s suspension of civility and empathy in Washington. We are seeing two new and significant steps in combating mental health and addiction challenges, a first step toward eagerly anticipated town-by-town progress grappling with our housing shortage, and — at a somewhat higher altitude — the energizing and unifying flush of enthusiasm following on the hugely successful Women’s March on Washington echoed at Five Corners, in Boston and Falmouth, and in countless cities around the world.
Also this week, The Martha’s Vineyard Substance Use Disorder Coalition, comprised of almost two dozen affected Island organizations, is sponsoring a major public forum on destigmatizing substance abuse and opioid addiction treatment, and more broadly a look at the public health aspects of opioid addiction. It will be an unusual opportunity to hear from Monica Bharel, M.D. and M.P.H. Dr. Bharel is the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH); she heads up the state’s response to the opioid crisis as well as the DPH efforts at cost containment, and will give Vineyarders a rare opportunity to hear about state and local responsibilities, and funding, regarding substance use disorder treatment. (See Barry Stringfellow’s “DPH commissioner to keynote Vineyard substance abuse forum.”)
In another major expansion of mental health services available on the Island, Jan Hatchard, head of development for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, and Julie Fay, MVCS executive director, have announced the establishment of a telemedicine psychiatric service in conjunction with the UMass Medical School in Worcester. UMass has considerable experience with telemedicine programs, typically an important area of community service for state medical schools. It’s particularly important in this case because private-practice psychiatrists rarely accept health insurance payments, adding a considerable barrier to access and to the stigmatization confronting mental health patients.
This program, like the recently announced Martha’s Vineyard Hospital/M.V. Community Services collaboration with off-Island detoxification centers, has depended on community-based financial support — in this case from the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank of Martha’s Vineyard, as well as private donors. These shared undertakings, always difficult to negotiate and implement, are the lifeblood of a small, isolated community like the Vineyard, where small scale often challenges both quality and efficiency of vital healthcare services. Hopefully this initiative will thrive, and can be expanded.
Close to home, community-killing housing shortages are a complex systemic Vineyard problem, the inevitable consequence of our second-home and destination desirability, our own natural growth, and our reflexive predisposition to conservation and development constraints. The good news is that the Island’s housing challenges are more a matter of leadership and community will than of information, creative strategies, or even cost. The risk, though, is the same. Inaction, in the face of great clarity regarding needs and solutions, is a decision to stonewall the problem and ignore our children, our seniors, our economy, and our workers.
As reported in this week’s MV Times (page A14), the tools to address the housing shortage are contained in the housing production plan (HPP) draft documents shared with each town this week. Funded and kickstarted primarily by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) and its recently arrived executive director Adam Turner, with organizing support from the Donor’s Collaborative and the All-Island Housing Task Force, each town’s planning process has laid out a path to meaningfully increase the supply of community housing to meet the needs of year-round residents in a five-year period. It remains to be seen, though, whether the towns will ruminate and consider, and effectively stonewall, making the necessary contractual commitments to get the housing we need built.
We know we Islanders can’t, on our own, turn back the tide of indifference and enmity emanating from the new sheriffs in Washington, but we can decisively and publicly own up to our own serious community challenges and keep pushing them along. Over the next few months, the leadership needs to surface, and the will of town voters needs to be cultivated, so we do what’s right.
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