“It is hard to find someone who hasn’t lost someone they know or love to addiction.” “It dovetails perfectly for what my interests and passions are,” she said. Restoration Recovery Center staff and volunteers, the Fitchburg facility that received funding through the HEALing Communities Study. I am so honored to be working for the Spanish American Center.”īuchholz said Spanish American Center is the “fiscal partner” and that she is “thrilled” to be hired for the position. “It is precisely because they are a long-standing trusted grassroots community agency that they were chosen to play such a vital role in the study. “They provide a service that no one else does, and services to multicultural friends and neighbors who may be struggling with housing and food insecurity, domestic violence, etc.,” she said. “I am really glad the Spanish American Center was chosen for that role.”īuchholz said she wants to emphasize “how critical” the Spanish American Center is to the region and to the study effort. “For each community they decided to work in they wanted to choose a trusted partner,” the Ashburnham resident said. She was hired by Spanish American Center as the community coordinator for the study project that has an $89 million total budget for all of the 16 communities included, which can mean a cluster of cities and towns. Susan Buchholz, a 2020 Bloomberg fellow, is the Joint Coalition On Health chair and coordinator. The Spanish American Center was chosen because of its continued involvement in the local community under the leadership of longtime Executive Director Neddy Latimer, including gifts and clothes for children in need around the holidays and year-round and offering COVID-19 vaccine clinics and dispersing COVID-19 home tests. A young man is vaccinated at the Spanish American Center in Leominster, which was selected as the fiscal agent for the HEALing Communities Study for its work in the local community including offering COVID-19 vaccine clinics, dispersing at home tests, and providing clothing and more for children and families in need. Restoration Recovery Center in Fitchburg and the Spanish American Center in Leominster are two of many organizations across the state involved in the Boston Medical Center Healing Communities Study funded by the National Institute of Health, which is investigating how tools for preventing and treating opioid addiction are most effective at the local level.

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