CSAC to Change Name to The Charlestown Coalition

By Seth Daniel

With more than enough abbreviated organizations in the Town and the state, the former CSAC is moving to something much simpler.

The Charlestown Substance Abuse Coalition (CSAC) has been in existence as an umbrella organization under the auspices of Mass General Hospital community benefits for years, but this month – during Recovery Month – they are rolling out their new name and logo.

Staring now, they will the The Charlestown Coalition.

“We are really changing our name for two reasons,” said Sarah Coughlin of the Coalition. “First, substance abuse isn’t used any longer in the addiction services community and we didn’t want that in our name. Second, we want to broaden our mission for working in the community. We started our work on addiction issues and now we want to focus on the overall health of the community, whether that’s addiction, trauma, violence and health living. We want to focus on making Charlestown the healthiest community it can be.”

The name change was something that came from the community.

Earlier this year, CSAC put out the call for submissions to help them find a new name. They had hundreds of submissions, but settled on a submission from John Killoran.

His idea was to simplify things and use a name that didn’t require abbreviations.

“He said there are so many organizations out there that have complicated names and abbreviated letters that we should make it simpler and easier,” said Coughlin. “We agreed.”

The structure of the organization will not change, she said, but simply the name and logo.

The new logo was designed by Bonnie Evans, who said it was a collaborative process.

“All the members of the team from the Charlestown Coalition had great ideas and a real vision for the way they want their foundation represented,” she said. “We wanted to show growth and community and the best representation of that was a tree, but we couldn’t leave out a little bit of the familiar place as home…The team members are true visionaries and inspirations. It was an honor to work with them.”

 

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