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Lowell Syringe Collection Program: The Specialist Model

100,000 needles collected since 2019. Two staff members. A coordinator who sweeps playgrounds before school buses arrive and responds to citizen reports the way a pothole crew responds to road complaints. A city that created the position after a spike in HIV cases and reports of children being pricked by discarded needles. And a political fight over whether the very programs designed to reduce disease are attracting the problem.

“I Wake Up Every Day to Try and Find Those Needles.”

Andres Gonzalez became Lowell’s first Syringe Collection Program Coordinator in April 2019. The Valley Patriot reported that Lowell was the second city in Massachusetts, behind Boston, to create a dedicated full-time position for needle collection (Valley Patriot, May 2019). The position was created after a spike in HIV cases in the city and reports from other communities of children being pricked by discarded needles.

Gonzalez described his work to The Lowell Sun:

My main driving goal is to make sure people are safe. It’s something that I take personally. I wake up every day to try and find those needles.

Andres Gonzalez, Syringe Collection Program Coordinator — The Lowell Sun

Within the first 16 days of the program, Gonzalez collected over 950 discarded syringes. The program expanded in subsequent years to include an assistant coordinator, Thomas Callahan. By 2025, the team had collected 100,000 needles from parks, playgrounds, streets, and sidewalks across Lowell.

On the first day of school in August 2025, Gonzalez was already making his rounds in South Common Park, directly behind the STEM Academy, when a Lowell Sun reporter spotted a syringe at the top of the stairs leading to the school. Gonzalez responded immediately, using tongs to place the needle in a sharps container. “I’m trying to sweep the high-traffic areas,” he said. “I swept this area the day before, and then I came first thing in the morning to make sure everything was OK.”

How Lowell Built It

The Syringe Collection Program is housed under the Substance Abuse and Prevention Division within the Lowell Health Department. Director of Health and Human Services Lisa Golden oversees the department.

The program started with a single staff member (Gonzalez) and a mission: respond to discarded needle reports and proactively sweep high-traffic areas. It has since grown to two full-time staff.

The design is deliberately minimalist. There is no large crew, no specialized vehicles or fleet equipment, no workforce development component, no social service connection, and no ambassador function. There is a coordinator with tongs, a sharps container, a phone line, and a route.

How citizens report needles:

Phone: Residents call Gonzalez directly at 978-674-1049 during program hours
Online: 311 Enterprise Service Request System — residents select “Hypodermic Needle/Syringe” under “Nuisance/Complaint/Violation”
After hours: Lowell Police Department non-emergency line (978-937-3200), which routes the request to Trinity Emergency Medical Services

The 311 online portal was described in program communications as operating “similar to when a pothole is reported.” That framing is deliberate: it normalizes needle collection as routine municipal infrastructure rather than a crisis response.

Gonzalez described the citizen reporting system as central to the program’s success: “It is through the strength of the citizens who call in — the citizens make this program work. They are utilizing the program as it was intended.”

The Numbers

Cumulative (2019–2025):

100,000 syringes collected

2025 alone:

More than 17,000 syringes removed (Lisa Golden, year-end summary to Board of Health)

Disposal infrastructure:

Sharps disposal kiosk provided by Massachusetts Department of Public Health at Lowell Health Department offices
Multiple disposal sites throughout the city
Quarterly Unwanted Medication and Sharps Disposal Days for residents

Staffing:

2 full-time positions (Coordinator: Andres Gonzalez; Assistant Coordinator: Thomas Callahan)

What It Looks Like

The First Day of School

August 26, 2025. Students walked toward the STEM Academy in Lowell’s Back Central neighborhood. One block from the school yard, they passed a man sleeping on the sidewalk. At the top of the stairs leading to the school from South Common Park, a syringe lay on the ground in an area filled with orange needle caps and trash.

Gonzalez was already in the park. He had swept the area the day before. He returned first thing that morning for exactly this reason: the first day of school required an extra check. When the Lowell Sun reporter called about the syringe, Gonzalez responded immediately.

The scene captured the program’s daily reality: the work is never done. Areas swept one day require sweeping the next. The program does not eliminate the needle problem. It manages the hazard continuously, day after day, creating a safer window between the time needles appear and the time children and families encounter them.

The Councilor’s Walk

In the summer of 2025, City Councilor Wayne Jenness walked through the Jackson, Appleton, Middlesex, and Summer streets area with Assistant City Manager Shawn Machado, city official Erik Gitschier, and a business owner. Jenness reported seeing “hundreds” of discarded needles during a 10-minute walk.

“The number of needles we saw was ridiculous,” Jenness told the council. “I have some serious concerns with the number of needles flying around in our community and laying on the ground for kids to pick up or someone to step on. We spend a lot of time and money going around and picking them up.”

The walk illustrated a tension inherent in the specialist model: the program collects thousands of needles per year, but the scale of the problem exceeds what two staff members can address. The question for Lowell’s leadership is not whether the program produces results. The 100,000 needles removed from playgrounds, parks, and sidewalks represent real hazards that would otherwise remain in public space. The question is whether the current scale of the program matches the scale of the problem.

The Political Context

Lowell’s Syringe Collection Program operates in a charged political environment. The city is a syringe service provider community under Massachusetts law: residents can access sterile needles through exchange programs. More than 86 of the state’s 351 communities established syringe service programs after the Baker administration authorized them in 2016. None of Lowell’s surrounding communities offer exchange programs, which some residents and council members believe draws people with substance use disorders to Lowell.

In August 2025, resident David Prestipino addressed the City Council, alleging that syringe exchange programs were encouraging people to come to Lowell for free needles. The allegation generated extensive social media coverage and political friction.

Health and Human Services Director Lisa Golden pushed back forcefully. “Since that meeting in August, the misinformation that has been given out on social media, the amount of stigma that has been given to the homeless people and the people who use drugs and substance abuse has been astronomical and detrimental to the community and to the service providers,” Golden told the Board of Health. “Things were said that are absolutely incorrect.”

Lowell Sun reporter Jess Speicher documented the tension in August 2025: some residents credit the syringe collection program with removing needles from public spaces; others blame the city’s syringe service program for putting them there. City Councilor John Drinkwater questioned the exchange program’s role. The CDC’s 30-year synthesis found that syringe service programs reduce HIV and hepatitis C incidence by approximately 50 percent and do not increase drug use or crime in surrounding areas (CDC SSP synthesis). A Veterans Affairs systematic review found that SSP users are 2.3 to 5.8 times more likely to dispose of syringes safely (VA HSR&D). No published evidence supports the claim that syringe programs increase community needle litter (CDC). The political debate in Lowell continued despite these findings (Lowell Sun, August 2025).

Golden noted that the 17,000+ syringes collected in 2025 included needles used for many purposes beyond injection drug use: insulin, immunosuppression medications, and weight-loss medications. The framing matters: the program serves public health broadly, not just addiction-related hazard.

The Design

The Specialist Model

Lowell represents the purest form of the specialist model: a small, dedicated team focused exclusively on one hazard type (discarded syringes), with no graffiti removal, no general litter collection, no workforce development component, and no ambassador functions. The program’s scope begins and ends with discarded syringes.

Advantages of the specialist model:

Low cost. Two full-time positions plus equipment is the smallest footprint of any documented Clean Team model. The barrier to launch is a single hire and a sharps container.
Clear mission. No scope creep risk. The program collects needles. Graffiti, broken glass, litter, and biohazard cleanup beyond syringes fall to other city services.
Rapid deployment. Gonzalez was hired in April 2019 and collected 950 needles in his first 16 days. The model requires no multi-agency coordination, no partner negotiation, no fleet procurement.
Institutional simplicity. Housed in the Health Department’s Substance Abuse and Prevention Division. No complex governance structure. No Business Improvement District (BID) politics. No nonprofit partnerships.

Limitations of the specialist model:

Scale constraint. Two people covering an entire city. Jenness’s 10-minute walk revealing hundreds of needles demonstrates the gap between the program’s capacity and the documented volume of discarded needles.
Single-hazard scope. Graffiti, broken glass, trash accumulation, and biohazardous waste beyond needles are not covered. A city with multiple environmental hazard types needs multiple programs or a broader model.
No secondary mission. Unlike Cincinnati’s workforce development model or Denver’s hybrid ambassador model, Lowell’s program produces only one output: needle removal. There is no employment pathway, no social service connection, no community engagement function.

Proactive + Reactive

Lowell combines proactive sweeps (Gonzalez checking playgrounds and high-traffic areas on a daily route) with reactive response (citizen reports through 311, direct calls, and after-hours police referral). The proactive component addresses known hotspots. The reactive component responds to emerging hazards reported by the public.

The ratio of proactive to reactive work has not been formally measured.

Funding

The program is funded through the City of Lowell’s Health Department budget. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health provides the sharps disposal kiosk. No federal grants, BID assessments, or nonprofit partnerships fund the operational costs.

What the funding covers: Two full-time salaries, sharps containers, tongs and collection equipment, disposal costs, the online reporting portal infrastructure (integrated into the city’s existing 311 system).

What the funding does not cover: Fleet equipment (Gonzalez operates on foot and in a city vehicle), expansion to additional staff, evaluation research, or any function beyond needle collection.

Total program budget: Not published.

Sustainability profile: Strong for its current scale. Two Health Department positions are institutional and recurring. The program does not depend on grants, political champions, or nonprofit partners. It is as structurally permanent as any other Health Department function. The risk is not elimination; it is inadequate scale. Two staff members collecting 17,000 needles per year in a city where a councilor finds hundreds in a 10-minute walk suggests the program needs expansion, not preservation.

What Is Missing

No independent evaluation. The 100,000 needle count is a program-reported figure. No external verification exists. No study has measured whether the program has reduced needle-stick injuries, emergency room visits for needle-related incidents, or HIV transmission rates, the outcomes that would demonstrate public health impact beyond volume of hazards removed.

No capacity analysis. How many needles exist in Lowell’s public spaces at any given time? What percentage does the program collect? What is the gap between what the program removes and what remains? Without these numbers, the program cannot demonstrate coverage or make a data-backed case for expansion.

No cost data. The total program cost, including both salaries, equipment, disposal, and administrative overhead, has not been published. Without it, no cost-per-needle or cost-effectiveness calculation is possible.

No comparison to peer cities. Boston, which created its needle collection position before Lowell, has a different model (including the needle buyback program). How Lowell’s approach compares, in cost, volume, coverage, and public health outcomes, is unknown.

The HIV data gap. The program was created in response to a spike in HIV cases. Whether the program has contributed to reducing HIV transmission in Lowell has not been studied. The program was created to address a public health crisis, and whether it has contributed to resolving that crisis is unknown.

Bottom Line: Lowell’s Syringe Collection Program operates with one full-time coordinator (Andres Gonzalez, hired April 2019) and one assistant (Tom Callahan), under director Lisa Golden. The program has collected over 100,000 needles from parks, playgrounds, streets, and sidewalks using a 311 portal and a dedicated hotline (Lowell Sun, August 2025; Valley Patriot, May 2019). Gonzalez told the Lowell Sun: “My main driving goal is to make sure people are safe… It’s something that I take personally. I wake up every day to try and find those needles” (Lowell Sun, via Clean Teams Q&A). No independent evaluation of the program’s impact on HIV transmission, needle-related injuries, or public health outcomes has been published. The program was created in response to a spike in HIV cases among injection drug users; whether it has contributed to reducing that transmission is unknown.

Safer Cities Policy Intelligence

Sources

**Program creation and early operations:**

New Syringe Collection Program in Lowell is Ready to Respond, The Valley Patriot (May 17, 2019): [valleypatriot.com](https://valleypatriot.com/new-syringe-collection-program-in-lowell-is-ready-to-respond/) — Program began April 19, 2019; 950 syringes in first 16 days; Gonzalez hours and reporting protocols; sharps disposal kiosk from Massachusetts DPH.

**100,000 syringe milestone and political context:**

Questions arise over Lowell’s needle exchange program, The Lowell Sun (August 20, 2025): [lowellsun.com](https://www.lowellsun.com/2025/08/20/questions-arise-over-lowells-needle-exchange-program/) — Lisa Golden confirms 100,000 syringes collected since inception; 50,000 milestone in 2022; Tom Callahan as assistant coordinator; David Prestipino allegations; syringe exchange program debate; second city behind Boston; HIV spike as impetus; 86 of 351 communities with SSPs.

**First day of school scene and Gonzalez quotes:**

The Column: Syringes, homeless mark Lowell’s first day of school, The Lowell Sun (August 31, 2025): [lowellsun.com](https://www.lowellsun.com/2025/08/31/the-column-syringes-homeless-mark-lowells-first-day-of-school/) — August 26, 2025 scene at STEM Academy/South Common Park; Gonzalez “I’m trying to sweep the high-traffic areas” quote; “citizens make this program work” quote; 100,000 needles in six years.

**2025 year-end data and Lisa Golden response:**

Northwood Rehab center fined $6K for ‘excessive trash’ on property (includes departmental updates), The Lowell Sun (February 7, 2026): [lowellsun.com](https://www.lowellsun.com/2026/02/07/northwood-rehab-center-fined-6k-for-excessive-trash-on-property/) — Golden year-end summary: 17,000+ syringes removed in 2025; needles include insulin, immunosuppression, and weight-loss medication syringes; 311 requests along walking trails, Kerouac Park, Riverwalk; sharps disposal kiosk locations.

**Councilor Jenness walk and overdose data:**

Overdoses in Lowell hit a record high in July, The Lowell Sun (September 11, 2025): [lowellsun.com](https://www.lowellsun.com/2025/09/11/overdoses-in-lowell-hit-a-record-high-in-july/) — Wayne Jenness walk through Jackson/Appleton/Middlesex/Summer streets area with Shawn Machado and Erik Gitschier; “hundreds” of needles in 10 minutes; “The number of needles we saw was ridiculous” quote; 67 overdoses in July 2025 (record since November 2018).

**Reporting and disposal infrastructure:**

Report a Discarded Needle, City of Lowell: [lowellma.gov](https://www.lowellma.gov/1206/Report-a-Discarded-Needle) — Phone reporting (978-674-1049), 311 Enterprise Service Request System, after-hours police routing (978-937-3200 to Trinity EMS).

Syringe Collection Program, City of Lowell: [lowellma.gov](https://www.lowellma.gov/1166/Sharps-Needles-Disposal) — Disposal locations, quarterly disposal days, kiosk at Health Department.

**COVID-era operations:**

Sharps Disposal during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Prevention Partners of Northern Middlesex (June 9, 2021): [preventionpartnersnm.org](https://preventionpartnersnm.org/sharps-disposal-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/) — Gonzalez continued collection through pandemic; consistent rates; works with 20+ community agencies.

**Syringe Service Programs context:**

Syringe Service Program locator, Massachusetts Department of Public Health: [mass.gov](https://www.mass.gov/info-details/syringe-service-program-locator) — SSP approval under MGL C111 S215; statewide list of approved communities.