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.
I’d like Dr. Haak to contact me please.
We’ve met.
My name is Ed Baker and I’d like to interview Dr. Haak on the Addiction Recovery Channel.
My website is http://www.edbakermsw.com.
Under the ARC Section you will see the Show Archive.
It’s the “most shared” Show on CCTV.
I admire Dr. Haak and would love to focus on his and his Team’s work.