Year: 2021

By Isabella Lenarduzzi
Kings Park High School

After a five-year legal battle, three pharmaceutical companies and distributors reached a settlement with Suffolk and Nassau counties on July 12 for their roles in furthering the deadly opioid addiction crisis. Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn announced this week that she plans to introduce a bill to ensure that money gets to where it is most needed.

Suffolk County expects to receive approximately $100 million in total from the settlement, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said in a press conference this week. 

As lawsuits and settlements like this play out in courtrooms across the country, people are raising concerns over how this money will be spent.

“Any money we get has to be invested into treatment and prevention,” Hahn said during a news conference Tuesday, rather than reimbursing county agencies “for funds they’ve already expended” on other issues. 

She said with her new proposed legislation, the money would go to addiction and mental health treatment centers, methadone clinics, and other support services for people who are addicted to opioids. She also said it is important to make healthcare accessible for people who are addicted. 

According to the Suffolk County Addiction and Support Advisory Panel, there were 1,381 reported overdoses, both fatal and non-fatal, in 2019. In 2020 that number increased to 1,515 overdoses in the county. Across the U.S., there were an estimated 93,330 reported overdoses in 2020, which is 5 percent higher than in 2019, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports. 

“This was not the drug-slingers on the street who were causing the problem,” Robert Calarco, the presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, said in a news conference this week. “It was the drug-slingers in executive board offices causing the problem, sending this problem back to us in Suffolk County . . . We are finally holding them accountable today.”

Hahn said she wants to ensure there is no misuse of the settlement money, saying, “It’s important we spend it right.”

Her plan would establish a task force of experts and individuals from organizations like the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence who would assess and decide where the money should go. This settlement is also a big win for LICADD, as its executive director, Steve Chassman, puts it.

“Certain U.S. pharmaceutical companies put dollars and cents ahead of public health and people’s lives. [It] is tragic on many levels,” Mr. Chassman said in an interview this week. “We weren’t just fighting the disease of substance abuse disorder or opioid dependence, we were fighting big capital and big pharma, over-prescribers.”

Johnson and Johnson’s executive vice president, Michael Ullmann, said in a statement on the company’s website this week that “we recognize the opioid crisis is a tremendously complex public health issue . . . This settlement will directly support state and local efforts to make meaningful progress in addressing the opioid crisis in the United States.”

Hahn’s new legislation builds upon her previous work in the Suffolk County Legislature. Because of a bill she wrote in 2012, which was adopted by the Suffolk County Legislature, all Suffolk County Police Department officers are now trained and equipped with a medication called naloxone, also known as Narcan, in order to prevent opioid overdose deaths. New York State eventually followed suit.

According to the New York State Department of Health, in 2019, law enforcement officers across the state reported using naloxone 1,558 times.

By Dan Stark
Westhampton Beach High School

The 2022 midterm elections are still over a year away, but many candidates have already started their campaigns. Bridget Fleming and Kara Hahn, two Suffolk County Legislators, have announced competing plans to seek the Democratic nomination in New York’s First Congressional District.

The seat is now held by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley). The district has supported both Democrats and Republicans for Congress and in presidential elections since the 1990s, but has swung rightward over the past decade. In 2020, incumbent President Donald Trump carried the district 51 percent to 47 percent over Joe Biden, while Zeldin won reelection with 55 percent of the vote. But with Zeldin leaving his seat to challenge Andrew M. Cuomo for governor of New York in 2022, Fleming and Hahn say they view his absence as an opportunity to flip the district despite its recent Republican lean.

Fleming, 61, announced her campaign on May 3. She ran for the same seat in the 2020 primary, but finished in third place behind Nancy Goroff and Perry Gershon with 27.5 percent of the vote. She said she was motivated to run by her dissatisfaction with Zeldin, claiming that “his positions don’t accurately reflect our communities.”

Fleming said she has designed her campaign to cover issues that are important to both Democratic voters and swing voters, including infrastructure reform, reducing gun violence, and expanding renewable energy usage on Long Island. In an interview this week, she referred to these as “critically important issues to our community” and said they would be her top priorities if elected to Congress. 

Fleming has served as Suffolk County’s 2nd District legislator since 2016. Her district is based on the East End and stretches from Montauk to East Moriches. Previously, she worked as an attorney in Manhattan and served on the Southampton Town Board from 2010 to 2015. 

“I’m fortunate in that I’ve had such success with my team in local offices, both with the town board and county legislature,” Fleming said.

Hahn’s campaign launched on June 2. A former social worker, she said her desire to help ease the problems of Long Island residents is her main reason for running.

If elected, healthcare would be one of her top priorities. “It’s so important that we don’t separate healthcare and mental healthcare,” she said during a press conference this week. “It’s all part of healthcare together.”

She also expressed support for fighting climate change, calling it “incredibly important, especially living here on Long Island.”

Another top priority for Hahn is voting rights. She said she is particularly dissatisfied with new, restrictive voting laws passed by states like Georgia, saying, “It’s very frustrating as an American who believes every American has the right to vote.”

Hahn, 50, represents the 5th Legislative District, which includes Port Jefferson, Stony Brook, and Setauket. She has been serving the district since 2011. She currently serves as deputy presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature and served as majority leader from 2016 to 2019. 

The date of the primary has not yet been announced by the New York State Board of Elections. The general election will be held on November 8, 2022.

The Suffolk County Democratic Party has yet to endorse a candidate, but Fleming was endorsed by Suffolk County Democratic Committee chairman Rich Schaffer at her campaign launch. She has also been endorsed by Robert Calarco, the presiding officer of the Legislature. Meanwhile, Hahn has been endorsed by Goroff and by New York State Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket). 

Both legislators have acknowledged that it’s hard running against each other, but they are staying positive about it.

“This is a democratic process,” Fleming said. “Anyone who feels they want to challenge anyone in the primary is welcome to do that.”

Hahn expressed confidence in the Democrats’ chances in the 2022 general election, saying, “I believe one of us will be the next Congressperson.”

By Julia Capitelli,
North Shore High School and

Tneil Gooden
Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences

Jessica Mongelli, a critical care nurse at Northwell Health Hospital in Lake Success, was dispatched to the front lines of the war against COVID-19 when the pandemic hit the New York area early last year.

 “We were the first team that cared for the sickest people in our tri-state area.” she said.

From working directly with COVID patients to seeing the effect COVID had on the hospital’s atmosphere, medical workers were tested in every way possible.  

“Being a critical care nurse is really stressful, it requires a mindset where we have to be extremely empathetic but be brave enough to disconnect ourselves because it is the worst time of a family’s life that you are participating in,” she said. “When we were put into the pandemic it was this situation but on steroids.”

The COVID crisis caused a lot of sadness and distrust in where the world was heading.

“When I was caring for a really young patient in his 20s, I lost faith,” Mongelli said. “I felt like we couldn’t save any of these patients. I cried hysterically during a group huddle and I am usually really optimistic.” 

Aside from the mental health aspect, lack of equipment was also a challenge.

“There were so many changes in the hospital due to COVID,” said Sasha McKenzie, a medical assistant at Mount Sinai Hospital in Jupiter, Florida. “If we were caring for a patient that had tuberculosis every time we would go into the patient’s room and put on a set of PPE (personal protective equipment), once we came out of the room all that would be discarded.”

She added: “Post COVID, we were literally saving everything possible, PPE’s were being used for the entire day versus a one time entrance into a patient’s room.” There was a limited amount of equipment available due to the high demand for them. 

There was also a drastic change in direction in the hospital system because COVID patients became the top priority.

“All hands in every area were on deck,” said Nick Pertoso, a hospital administrator at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. “Separate COVID units were created to handle the influx of people. No surgeries were being done, only COVID. Staff were coming from other facilities just to help out.” 

People were taken out of their fields and thrown into COVID scene in such a haste that COVID became the main aspect of the hospital. 

Stony Brook University medical students were not immediately deployed — but they sprang into action when they got the call.

“When it first started, we actually had to suspend our medical students from their clinical rotations.” Dr. Andrew Wackett, Vice Dean of Undergraduate Medical Education said. “The reason for it was mainly because of the lack of PPE.” 

This was just another obstacle to overcome. 

“A lot of it came from the N95 masks, those are very special filtered masks,” Dr. Wackett added. “In the past we would use those masks for other airborne diseases, Tuberculosis is one, measles, but these diseases we don’t see all that frequently, so the amount of masks that healthcare requires for this is very limited.” 

Eventually, they were able to obtain more equipment and personnel.

 “When we brought [the students] back, the pandemic was still going strong so they actually still had a lot of opportunities to take care of patients also.” Wackett added.

With all of the changes that COVID has forced in both the medical field and the world in general, the question becomes whether we will return to pre-pandemic conditions.

“I do not think that normal is possible post-pandemic,” McKenzie said. “A lot of individuals are now scared and possibly paranoid.”

Unfortunately, COVID’s effects are long lasting.

While we may not be able to return to what “normal” was prior to the pandemic, some lessons were learned. The magnitude and gravity of the event are impossible to ignore. The medical community and world as a whole were faced with the unexpected. Healthcare workers’ perseverance has gotten the world back to a new normal. 

“It opened up the eyes that there needs to be more interest placed in public health,” McKenzie said.