About Us

Message from CEO, Nancy E. Paull

When I began my career at SSTAR in 1977, I could not have imagined that the organization and I would be celebrating 30 Years of Caring together. After my maternity leave in 1981, I thought that I would come back for a year or so before moving on to another job. However, the challenges and growth of the organization have continually allowed me to be creative, to institute my dreams and to develop services that are most needed in the communities we serve.

Through the years, the Boards of Directors and staff have been so supportive, both in terms of vision and in times when economic realities have been difficult. Our newest work in the international community has been so rewarding for me and has helped SSTAR achieve international acclaim. I have spent most of my adult life at SSTAR, and I couldn't think of a better job for me.

As I reflect on SSTAR's amazing journey, many people come to mind. Some have easily recognizable names, for their leadership in our organization's development is well known. Far greater in number are the countless individuals who have worked quietly and without notice to carry out our mission of compassionate care. Then, of course, there are the thousands upon thousands of people who have come through our doors in search of treatment for their disease of addiction.

Unfortunately, the stigma of the disease is something that has not changed in all the time I have been in the field. This stigma has been detrimental to the patients personally and to the field as a whole. It ties into another challenge which is adequate funding. Inadequate resources are hurting the people we are trying to treat, delaying new treatments because of the lack of research dollars and hurting our staffing because we cannot keep pace with other medical and social service sectors in terms of equal pay.

Despite these challenges, I am proud that SSTAR has led the way as it evolved from a localized provider of alcohol dependency treatment in its early days to an international presence in the treatment of chemical dependency and HIVIAIDS today. In our first two decades, SSTAR made history with its many groundbreaking initiatives. We were the first agency in the area to establish a combined inpatient alcohol and drug detoxification unit as well as the first to open an HIV/AIDS walk-in testing clinic. We were also the first facility in Southeastern Massachusetts to detoxify pregnant addicts. SSTAR of Rhode Island was selected to be the first private agency to provide public detoxification services in Rhode Island and will be the first agency to be responsible for uninsured Rhode Islanders who need acute psychiatric and substance abuse services.

In our third decade, our outreach has taken on global dimensions. SSTAR’s relationship with the American International Health Alliance, which is working to effect sustainable change in the healthcare infrastructure of 21 nations, marked the beginning of our international humanitarian medical missions to former Soviet Union countries. After attending AIHA’s first Substance Abuse Conference in Georgia, I traveled to Russia the following year to participate in a project assisting people living with HIV/AIDS. Another mission saw a delegation from SSTAR, including Denise Wright and Dr. Genie Bailey, spend two weeks in Sevan, Armenia, where we shared healthcare information and nursing skills with the staff of the Sevan Polyclinic. In Armenia, the reality of SSTAR’s International reputation touched me deeply at a Doctors Without Borders site. When I introduced myself, the workers there said, “We know SSTAR.” It was gratifying to realize that the work we had done in Sevan didn’t just stay in the clinic.

In 2005, my peripatetic lifestyle on behalf of SSTAR continued with the organization’s selection as one of only two resource centers in the United States, and one of 20 worldwide, to be part of Treatnet, an initiative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime to provide diversified, effective and quality drug dependence treatment and rehabilitation services, including HIV/AIDS prevention and care. The overall goal of the Treatnet network is to share with organizations in different countries around the world those good practices and state-of-the-art approaches that have been studied and proven to be effective in drug dependence treatment and rehabilitation. It was an honor to represent SSTAR and meet with the other working group members at the planning meeting held in Vienna, Austria, the home of the UNODC.

In 2006, I was involved in a Training Consortium project led by UCLA in Cairo, Egypt where Pat Emsellem, SSTAR COO, and I participated in “training the trainers” from many countries in the development of effective, evidence-based programs. One moment during the week in Egypt deserves recounting. As we listened to the story of a heroin addict, we thought that we could be listening to the story of someone in Fall River, Massachusetts. We were struck once again by the universality of the disease and its symptoms, and the realization that effective treatment can be possible the world over. That same year, I traveled to China for a meeting to begin work on the initiative to develop a manual for organizations in China, Russia, Australia and Kenya on the integration of HIV care into drug treatment settings.

SSTAR’s global reach emanates from our home base in Fall River as well. In our role as mentor to organizations in countries that want to adopt the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx) model of process improvement, I telecommute with Egypt Indonesia and India, consulting on ways to improve access to treatment cutting the no-show rate, increasing admissions and increasing the time in treatment.

SSTAR is a gem in the community a world-class organization that will continue to grow and promote best practices in the fields of addiction, medicine, mental health and social services and in the integration of care for best client outcomes. This special anniversary for SSTAR should serve as a reminder to all of us that people with addictions are not strangers. They are friends, relatives, people in the news… people who deserve the best that science and compassion can offer.