The Impact of Decriminalizing Possession and Use of Illegal Drugs in Massachusetts
Thursday, October 6, 2022, 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.
Theodore A. Calianos, II, MD, FACS
Ted Calianos, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, is a practicing plastic surgeon in Mashpee. He was in private practice for several years prior to joining Medical Affiliates of Cape Cod (MACC), the multispecialty group practice of Cape Cod
Healthcare (CCHC), and serves as its medical director. He serves on numerous committees at Cape Cod Healthcare.
Dr. Calianos has been a member of the Medical Society since 1999. Dr. Calianos serves as the co-chair of the Working Group on Sustainability. He served as the chair of the Committee on Legislation and as a member of the Committee on Finance. He is a longtime
active member of the Barnstable District Medical Society, where he has served as district president and is currently the district treasurer. He is also an MMS delegate to the American Medical Association and is the vice-chair of the delegation. He
has been honored with an AMA Foundation Leadership Award.
Dr. Calianos serves on the American Society of Plastic Surgery’s Committee on Legislative Affairs and is a diplomate of the American Board of Plastic Surgery and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons.
Dr. Calianos earned his BS at Boston College and his MD at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (UTMB). He was a general surgery resident at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester. He completed plastic surgery training
at UTMB and a hand surgery fellowship at Rush Medical Center in Chicago.
Stefan Topolski, MD
Stefan Topolski has worked with individuals experiencing behavioral health and substance use disorders for 30 years on the streets, in shelters and soup kitchens, in hospitals and in their homes from Boston to Baltimore and Pittsburgh to Madrid. He is
now a country doctor in active rural practice, a teacher of family medicine, an ethicist, and an avid writer and complex systems science theorist who continues to speak out for care without stigma or prejudice.
Dr Topolski served veterans suffering mental illness and addiction for 15 years at the VA Leeds psychiatric hospital. He has served on faculty for Tufts, BU, and UMass and as medical director for Commonwealth Care Alliance in their innovative care with
the underserved. He supports the Opioid Task Force of Franklin County and the Franklin Recovery Center while leading Shelburne Falls’ small nonprofit community health center with dedicated mental health and substance dependence treatment in rural
western Massachusetts.
He has presented papers on the experience, meaning and modeling of health and illness before the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, the Family Medicine Education Consortium, the North American Primary Care Research Group and World Organization of
Family Doctors among others. And for two decades Stefan’s creative programming of CottageMed - the world’s first free, cross-platform, open-source EMR - has opened the door for USAID, the UN, and young doctors worldwide to begin sharing the benefits
of electronic medical records with their patients across many borders.
Today he continues to advocate for what he loves most through home visits, clinical collaborations, teaching and public speaking on the role of integrative care models in improving access to quality healthcare without judgement for each person.
Catherine Tomko, MHS, PhD
Catherine Tomko, PhD, MHS, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She earned her Master of Health Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees at the Bloomberg School
of Public Health, Department of Health, Behavior and Society at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Tomko’s research broadly centers on the social and structural determinants of health (particularly mental health) and healthcare access of people who use
drugs and/or sell sex. She is part of a team evaluating the public safety and racial equity impacts of Baltimore’s drug and sex work decriminalization policy enacted in 2020.
Eowyn Rieke, MD, MPH
Eowyn is passionate about centering community and connection in addictions medicine. Substance use care has been part of her work for over 20 years in primary care. Eowyn received her MD degree from Brown University and MPH from Harvard School of Public
Health. She worked in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania before moving to Portland in 2011. She spent her 1st 4 years in Portland working at Outside In then moved to work at Central City Concern. At CCC she supervised shelter-based services and other
outreach and provided primary care at Old Town Clinic. She joined the team designing and implementing services for the Blackburn Center, which opened in July, 2019. As services director at the Blackburn Center, she worked to develop person-centered,
trauma-informed and integrated substance use, primary care, mental health, housing and employment services. In May, 2021 Eowyn moved to De Paul Treatment Centers, now Fora Health, to serve as the medical director of outpatient services. In this role
she is developing programs to insure patients have uninterrupted access to medications as they transition within Fora Health programs and to community-based prescribers. Eowyn is also interested in policy and serves on the state of Oregon's Measure
110 Council which is setting policy and rules for $300 million in state funds for substance use care. In Eowyn's non-work life she is delighted to spend time gardening, and with her teenage kid and rescue pup Toad Macaroni.
Jessie Gaeta, MD
Jessie M. Gaeta, MD has practiced Internal Medicine at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) since 2002, and served as Chief Medical Officer from 2015-2022. Dually board certified in Internal Medicine and Addiction Medicine, Dr. Gaeta graduated
from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1998, trained in Internal Medicine at Boston University Medical Center, and served as Chief Resident in 2002. She completed a Physician Advocacy fellowship at the Institute on Medicine as a Profession
at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2007.
Dr. Gaeta has dedicated herself to advocacy for and with people living with substance use disorders, particularly when they are disconnected from traditional pathways to care. She is always learning more from people with lived experience about homelessness,
opioid use disorder, and harm reduction. Over the past two decades, she has spearheaded numerous innovative initiatives to rethink how we approach care for individuals with substance use disorder and complex health conditions, particularly when these
conditions are exacerbated by severe poverty and social stigma.
Her tenure as CMO included the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she led BHCHP’s response, which included operating the 500-bed COVID field hospital at the Convention Center known as Boston Hope, implementing comprehensive COVID testing
across Boston’s shelter system, and vaccination efforts that focused on racial equity.
