The Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the North Quabbin Region brought together the North Quabbin Community Coalition and the Healing After Loss to Overdose (HALO) Initiative, a Boston-based organization that provides financial assistance for families impacted by an overdose death, on Thursday to shine a light on models of support.
“These two organizations do incredible work to support family members who have lost a loved one due to overdose,” said Deb McLaughlin, coordinator of the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the North Quabbin Region.
HALO, founded in 2025 by Elsa Gomes Bondlow and Brendan Little, provides financial support for funerals, child wellness, behavioral health and legal fees for families in the Boston area. Applicants must live in Boston, and HALO provides up to $7,500 per family, the funding for which all comes from opioid settlement funds.
Heather Bialecki-Canning, executive director at the North Quabbin Community Coalition, said that while HALO is more tailored to the Boston area, they’ve extended an invitation to Little and Gomes Bondlow to visit the North Quabbin region and see how their model could translate to a rural area.
One of the bigger issues in combating the use of deadly and dangerous drugs, according to Bialecki-Canning, is acknowledging addiction’s role in a death. Often, she said, people will say the deceased died of a heart attack or a stroke, and while this was the official cause of death, addiction contributed to those circumstances.
“We really have a call to action for folks to consider using the language, ‘We lost this person after a battle with addiction,'” Bialecki-Canning explained. “It’s OK to use that language, and we want to make that OK with the families because it helps to put the grief out there and helps to acknowledge the issue. It also helps just across the board with prevention [and] intervention.”
Unlike the state as a whole, Franklin County and the North Quabbin region did not see a decrease in the number of opioid-related overdose deaths in 2025 compared to 2024, staying level at 12. Combating this, Bialecki-Canning said, entails providing meaningful education about the harms of drug use and addiction instead of sweeping it under the rug.
“If we can talk about it and put things in the light, we can deal with it,” Bialecki-Canning said. “If it’s in the dark, we can’t.”
