Throughout the opioid epidemic, Western Massachusetts has long been one of the hardest hit regions in the state, with Hampden County having one of the highest opioid overdose rates in the commonwealth. Numbers are still high, but local officials are reporting progress and touting a special team that’s been making inroads.
Earlier this month, at least a hundred healthcare professionals, addiction experts and law enforcement crowded a conference room in the UMass Center in downtown Springfield.
It was a meeting of the Hampden County Addiction Taskforce (HCAT) – a collaborative effort launched by the Hampden District Attorney’s Office and the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office.
At the center of its July meeting – progress appearing in its own data system, including a downtick in fatal overdose deaths.
“We've seen a decrease [of] 23 percent - from 52 deaths a year ago, we now had 40 this past year,” said Hampden County Sheriff Nick Cocchi July 9, 2025. “That's 53 and 40 too many, but we're seeing a decrease. We're seeing an increase in active referrals, which means people are starting to hear from our people that are working so diligently on the Addiction Task Force.”
Joined by District Attorney Anthony Gulluni, Cocchi gathered reporters ahead of the meeting to show overdose deaths, non-fatal overdoses and “behavioral health incidents” were down, comparing the first half of 2025’s numbers with the same period last year.
That’s according to data from the Critical Incident Management System (CIMS) that various Hampden County towns and cities share data with. It’s not a complete picture, but with many communities taking part, such as Springfield, Holyoke, Chicopee and Ludlow, it’s getting info from the bulk of the county.
During the conference, analysts pointed out some of 2024’s overall numbers were also down compared to ’23 - 90 fatal overdoses in Hampden County total, compared to 97 a year before that.
But this year, at least one number is up and was emphasized by Cocchi and Gulluni alike – “At-Risk Referral Utilization.” Compared to the first half of '24, the number of times an individual at-risk gets referred to HCAT’s “Rapid Response and Connection Team” is up at least 50 percent in '25 (150 cases).
“[It’s] incredible work that's being done with folks who experience a non-fatal overdose … there is direct outreach to them and to their families within 24 hours after that incident, really reaching out at that vulnerable time to ensure that services are provided in a very non-threatening way to make sure that individual going through that experience has an opportunity towards recovery and doesn't return to substance use,” Gulluni said.
At the team’s core are three individuals, doing everything from house calls to driving out across the county to texting with different parties, all to connect someone with treatment to prevent a future overdose.
Since hitting the streets in 2021, they’ve reported 2,235 outreach attempts as of June, with around 1,300 cases of making successful contact.
The team has also helped get 231 individuals into treatment since its inception – with more than half - 147 – reportedly happening between June of 2024 and June 2025 alone - “sustained momentum,” the task force reports.
As HCAT Coordinator Bradley Bodenstein tells WAMC, weeks later, those numbers never stopped going up.
“We've got 12 individuals into treatment this month – actually, 16: we got four in yesterday,” he said Tuesday. “We were out there cooking. It was Monday, we hit the ground running and we were able to place four people into treatment … a Grand Slam day for us.”
Once on the street himself, Bodenstein has been working in outreach for at least 12 years. He’s currently part of a team that includes James Barron, a program coordinator and care coordinator Destiny Ware -- all operating in a small office in the All-Inclusive Support Services building off State Street.
The building’s a hub for all kinds of human support services, but in the Rapid Response and Connection Team’s case, the crew is seldom in it – they’re often off to Springfield, Chicopee or any of the county’s communities that call on them.
Bodenstein says his team’s uptick in successful referrals stem, in-part, from how fast-acting they can be.
“Let's be honest: a week, two weeks later, the dust is settled. [An OD victim’s] moving on with their life. They've said what they said to their loved ones, - ‘I'm okay, I'm good, I don't need any help,’ but if you get them within that 24 to 72 hours, that's when it's really fresh, it's raw inside them, they're still a little shaken up about it, and it's just like, yeah, ‘I really should do something here.’”
It’s an approach that’s getting results, says Barron, who tells WAMC his team’s not only having a breakthrough in terms of being summoned – they’re being recognized by the very people they’re out to help.
“We literally let them know firsthand ‘Hey, you're not in any trouble. We're here as a support to you,’” he said. “We were just trying to figure out how to collaborate with other facilities and resources out in the community. In doing that, once we built rapport with our community, police departments, individuals the word got out … it kind of filled [a] void.”
Initially funded, in part, by a U.S. Department of Justice Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Site-based Program (COSSAP) Grant, the rapid-response team tells WAMC that, due to their success, when the grant ended last year, the sheriff’s office put the team on the office’s budget.
Ware adds it’s work that’s round-the-clock for her team – times for clocking in and out are just numbers, to some extent.
“Although this is our job, we’re not doing this just because it’s our job – we’re doing this because we love to do it and we want to do this. I know for myself, I don’t wake up every day saying ‘Man, I’ve got to go punch in [at] a clock,’” she said, turning to paperwork on her desk. “I’ve been working on this [case] since last night and I have not slept because I know she will have no place to stay … and - miracles work out - she might be placed today.”
More information on the response team and HCAT can be found ere.
