Mitchell Discusses New Bedford Opioid Response at National Forum

On Wednesday, Mayor Jon Mitchell represented the City of New Bedford at the Mayors’ Institute on Opioids, hosted by the National League of Cities.

Mitchell led a delegation representing organizations in New Bedford, including Police Chief Joseph Cordeiro, Dr. Michael Rocha, and Reverend David Lima of the Interchurch Council, among others.

"New Bedford was selected as one to be featured, because we do a good job at dealing with the issue from every angle, in terms of prevention, and law enforcement response, Narcan response, emergency response, to our outreach programs--all of it," Mitchell said in his weekly appearance on WBSM.

Other cities participating included Manchester, New Hampshire; Huntington, West Virginia; Knoxville, Tennessee; Madison, Wisconsin; and Tacoma, Washington.

"We got to share our efforts, and see how we can do things better," Mitchell said. "We were also getting ideas with the prospect of some major grant funding to come along with that, from some of the big funders that were there, although that's not definitive yet. But there's going to be more money available to implement some of the things we discussed."

According to Mitchell, the key part of solving the opioid crisis in New Bedford is figuring out exactly how it happens and how to best combat it.

"The big challenge for us is, to help us gather better data about what types of treatments work, what's the profile of people that might use, including children, and what kind of medications work best," he said.