State officials spend millions of dollars each year to combat the opioid epidemic. Now, the private sector is stepping up, led by big players such as Partners HealthCare and General Electric.
Governor Charlie Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey, and Mayor Martin J. Walsh are expected to headline an event Tuesday to highlight a new business-backed initiative that would address the state’s long-term addiction and treatment problems.
A media advisory distributed Friday said more than 60 business, health care, and community leaders will join the elected officials at the Taj Boston hotel for the launch of the statewide effort.
The Baker administration has been quietly working with Partners for months on this, but neither side would comment on the details this week.
What is clear is that Partners and GE will be among the first contributors.
Fighting opioid addiction is an important issue for both organizations. The two have worked together to tackle it before: Partners-owned Massachusetts General Hospital and the GE Foundation hosted a “hack-a-thon’’ last September to challenge teams of innovators to come up with solutions to the epidemic.
The issue is also one of Baker’s biggest priorities — the administration has made more treatment beds available, for example, and distributed numerous Narcan rescue kits.
Partners and GE have smart reasons to support Baker. Partners faces continual scrutiny for the prices it charges, and Baker’s state budget proposal would impose price caps for the state’s most expensive tier of hospitals.
GE, meanwhile, is new in town and wants to make a good impression. A quasi-public state agency also happens to be GE’s development partner on its new headquarters project.
But executives at both Boston-based organizations know that fighting addiction is about much more than politics.
With opioid-related overdoses in Massachusetts far exceeding the national average, this is a crisis that can undermine their employees’ families and their communities.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe-.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonchesto.
