Last December, Johns Hopkins alumnus and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg recognized Fingerhood as one of 10 “heroes” at a summit of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative, a project designed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to address the environment, obesity, adolescent health risks, violence and drug abuse.Īt the direction of Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels, Fingerhood and a team of five community leaders are guiding a quest to cut East Baltimore’s opioid addiction in half by 2024. In February of this year, the ASAM named Fingerhood a distinguished fellow. With Darius Rastegar, another Johns Hopkins physician in the Comprehensive Care Practice, he co-authored the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) Handbook of Addiction Medicine, published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. That database, which is part of the Maryland Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, became state law in 2011.įingerhood serves on the board of the Behavioral Health Leadership Institute, a Baltimore nonprofit organization that operates a mobile treatment program and distributes anti-overdose medication around the city. In the early days of the prescription drug crisis, Fingerhood urged Maryland lawmakers to establish a database for physicians to check before prescribing narcotic pain medicine.
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Fingerhood helps keep me grounded.”įingerhood has dedicated a career to taking action against the disease of addiction, whether by chipping away at the crisis one patient at a time, by teaching Johns Hopkins medical students how to work with patients who have substance use disorders, or by advocating for sensible legislative policy. I haven’t used in almost 20 years, but it’s still something I have to pay attention to.
“He’ll ask if I’m still going to my (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings and talking to my sponsor. Fingerhood asks about when I see him,” says a longtime patient who battles alcoholism. More than 6,000 people, many of whom have been sober or off drugs for years, rely on the practice for routine medical care. Heroin, fentanyl and other opioids are the most common substances Fingerhood and his team see, but the practice also treats patients with alcohol, cocaine and other substance use problems. “But it does need to inform the care we provide them.” “Addiction certainly doesn’t define the people who come to our practice,” he explains.
Founded by Fingerhood at a time when many Baltimoreans struggling with addiction had few options for health care, the practice provides judgment-free support to people fighting dependence on drugs or alcohol.įingerhood says patients with substance use disorder need a special brand of primary health care. The summer of 2019 marks the silver anniversary of the Comprehensive Care Practice at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, a primary-care clinic that places special emphasis on patients with substance use problems. Fingerhood helped me through the most difficult time in my life,” says Amy Hudson (not her real name). Several of those overdoses, she says, were nearly fatal. She relapsed and overdosed on heroin seven times between June and August 2017. One city resident says that number might have been 693 were it not for her doctor, Michael Fingerhood.Īfter years of recovery, the death of two close relatives left the woman reeling. In 2017, 692 people died of opioid overdoses in Baltimore.
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