Page 5 - Healthcare Heores 2021

HEALTHCARE HEROES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
James
Goodwin
President and CEO, Center for Human Development
In His Long History with CHD, He’s Seen Plenty of Lives Changed
OBy Joseph Bednar
n more than one occasion as he spoke with Busi- nessWest/Healthcare News, Jim Goodwin referred
to “short-termers” — employees who, for whatever reason, don’t stay at the Center for Human Develop- ment for very long, and don’t get to see the full scope
of CHD’s impact on individual lives.
And that’s unfortunate because that impact, he noted, can be
slow.
“One of the positives about being here a long time is you get to
see how things change,” said Goodwin, the organization’s president and CEO. “We’re not working with a group of people where you sit down and have a conversation and they come away changed. It’s a process.”
For instance, he said, “people that experience serious substance- use issues often try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, and then they make some progress. When you’ve been around a while, you know failure is part of the process, and you see the change over time.
“It’s the same thing with mental health,” he went on. “Certain things in mental health never go away. It’s like diabetes; it’s with you for life. You figure out how to cope with it, how to live with it — and that is a long, hard process.”
That process may include a combination of resources, from medications to therapy to stress-management strategies, he explained.
“When you get to see it happen over time, you see that people can learn skills, they can learn to function normally with various forms of mental illness. You see the difference in people who get services and hang in there and fight the fight and come out the other end. I’ve gotten to see a lot of people come out the other end, develop those skills, and change their lives.”
In his 42 years with CHD, the last 16 as president and CEO, Goodwin has seen plenty of growth; since 2005, the agency has grown from a $48 million entity to $125 million, and from around 1,300 employees to 2,000. He sees the impact, as he noted, in those individual lives changed, but it’s the sheer number of those stories, and the scope of CHD’s work, that has earned Goodwin the title of Healthcare Hero for 2021 in the Lifetime Achievement category.
“There are a lot of things I’m proud of,” he said, trying to sum up those years. “CHD has had tremendous growth over the years. And as needs have changed, we’ve been able to change and adapt and provide services in more areas.”
Opioid use is one such growth area, he noted. “Over the years, the need for substance-use services has grown substantially, and that has required us to deliver services differently.”
Leah Martin Photography
“People that experience serious substance-use issues often try and fail, try and fail, try and fail, and then they make some progress. When you’ve been around a while, you know failure is part of the process, and you see the change over time.
Today, CHD’s services span a wide gamut, including behavioral health and addiction recovery, housing and homelessness, food insecurity, youth welfare, intellectual and developmental disability,
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OCTOBER 2021 A5
2021 HEALTHCARE HEROES