Month: December 2019

Dr. Haak and the Chronic Pain/Narcotics Community Forum held a conference in 2009 called the “Community Conference on Prescription Drugs” at BFA high school in St. Albans, Vermont. Dr. Haak hoped that as many community members as possible would come, and in fact 120 people did attend. Throughout the Conference, however, he kept asking himself the question: “What is it that you want each individual community member to do?”

In 2013, Dr. Haak transitioned from his Medical Director positions with the Emergency Department, and Hospitalist Program at Northwestern Medical Center, into a full time addiction medicine position at the NMC Comprehensive Pain Program. While in that practice Dr. Haak created a “Curriculum,” or series of talks and exercises, that he used to help his patients better understand their disease of addiction.

His patients consistently noted that they felt the talks helpful and the exercises rewarding. After several years of considering his initial question regarding how to integrate individual community members’ efforts, Dr. Haak has been intrigued by one possible answer to that question. And it is with these thoughts in mind that Dr. Haak and his Team have developed the upcoming Program of Community Addiction Workshops.

The Workshop Program is designed to help community members understand, in simple terms, what physically, neurobiologically and psychologically happens in people suffering from addictions. To effectively accomplish that overall goal, the Program has incorporated four different components. First, the Workshops will provide community members informational material to address the “How and Why” addictions develop, in simple, understandable terms and concepts.

Next, attendees will follow a patient scenario and “become that patient” for the duration of the Workshops. Realistic life “updates or injects” will be forwarded to attendees to illustrate some of the real life events that may challenge patients developing serious addictions, and better understand their road to recovery.

A third Program component incorporates break-out “brainstorming sessions,” with a dedicated facilitator, to identify ways that individual community members can become an active part in the support, and possibly an integral component of a recovery solution. And fourth, an optional training session will be available on the use of “overdose kits,” and an opportunity to actually take them home for use in the future if needed.

Through these activities, Dr. Haak will attempt to provide a nonthreatening environment of learning and gather important data to try to help develop a system incorporating individual community members into the treatment and on-going support for their fellow community members suffering from the disease of addiction. This model might then potentially be replicated in other small rural communities that do not have the available treatment and support resources that larger communities might have.

Dr. Ed Haak is a graduate of the Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine and practiced Emergency Medicine for 35 years. During that time he was the Medical Director of a number of Emergency Departments across the country. In 1981, he transitioned from working in the Emergency Department (ED) in Grayling, Michigan to his first Emergency Department (ED) Medical Directorship in Gaylord, Michigan. In 1986, Dr. Haak joined Spectrum Emergency Health Services, the largest national emergency medicine group in the country with over 350 emergency departments nationwide, and accepted the ED Directorship at Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans, Vermont. While in that position, he was asked by Spectrum to be their Northeast Regional Medical Director, working with 15 different ED Medical Directors throughout the Northeast. Developing the strongest regional team in the corporation, he was awarded the President’s Award for the National Regional Medical Director of the Year, and the Eagle Physician of Vision Award.

Dr. Haak was drawn to Vermont, not only for the NMC Medical Director position, but also by the strong sense of caring within the communities. He became the President of the Board for the Northwest Vermont Health Network that later joined the Richford Health Center to become the now Northern Tier Center for Health (NOTCH). He was also elected the President of the Board for the Fairfield Community Center, helping to obtain a HUD grant to transition the vacant elementary school in East Fairfield to the active Fairfield Community Center that resides there today. Recognizing some of his community efforts, Dr. Haak was awarded the Vermont Physician Award for Community Service in 1998.

In 2010, in addition to being Medical Director of the NMC Emergency Department, Dr. Haak took on the Director position of the Northwestern Medical Center’s Hospitalist Program that was in need of support and reorganization. It was in 2013 that Dr. Haak transitioned from both of his Director positions into a full time addiction medicine practice at the NMC Comprehensive Pain Program. In 2016, Dr. Haak joined the Northern Tier Center for Health (NOTCH) and became the Medical Director for the seven rural clinics serving Franklin-Grand Isle County. And in 2017 he became the Director of the NOTCH Opioid Treatment and Education Center in Swanton, establishing a comprehensive office based opioid treatment program. He is currently on the Vermont Medical Society Advisory Council, VMS Opioid Task Force, and a member of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and the American Osteopathic Academy of Addiction Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Dr. Haak has always placed a strong emphasis on treating his patients with caring and compassion, and attempted to use common understandable terms to explain their disease, injury, and treatment. It is with that same commitment that Dr. Haak created a basic curriculum that he used to help his patients better understand their disease of addiction. He will now attempt to share that same core understanding with the general community in a series of ten Community Addiction Workshops, beginning February 18th, at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Swanton. Through this experience, Dr. Haak is hoping to build a reproducible framework that rural communities may use to organize, and empower individual community members to become active players contributing to a system supporting its citizens suffering from the disease of addiction.