Heroin and other opioid-related deaths rose in Massachusetts last year, totaling more than 1,000, but the state’s third largest city bucked the trend.
Springfield Health and Human Services Commissioner Helen Caulton-Harris said the city formed a working group in 2009 to come up with ways to prevent opioid overdose deaths.
" The opioid overdose epidemic appears to be more in the outskirts of Springfield, but we certainly have our challenges," she said.
A pilot program trained community groups, police officers, and drug addicts’ family members to use the anti-overdose drug known as Narcan to save lives.
Springfield recorded 23 drug overdose deaths in 2013, the number dropped to 14 through the first nine months of last year.
