Vancouver Family Donates $20 Million to Drug Treatment Model After Overdose Death of Family Member

Jill Diamond (L), executive director of the Diamond Foundation and sister Steven Diamond, who died of overdose, announces a $20 million donation to St. Pauls Foundation for substance abuse care, with Dick Vollet and Fiona Dalton, in Vancouver, B.C., on June 12, 2023. Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press

A wealthy Vancouver family made a $20 million donation on June 12 to a new drug treatment model planned to open later this fall in B.C., in memory of their family member who died of a fentanyl overdose while waiting to see an addictions psychiatrist.

Jill Diamond, executive director of the Diamond Foundation, a philanthropic organization in Vancouver, said on June 12 that her 53-year-old brother, Steven Diamond, went through the B.C. system for help for a long-standing substance abuse problem. She said he experienced a “messy system of delays and disappointments.”

“Some people say the system is simply broken. But the truth is, the system we need doesn’t even exist,” said Diamond. Her brother, who she described as athletic, loving, and helpful, died in 2016. After spending three months on a waiting list, he died after a fentanyl overdose less than a week before he was scheduled to see an addictions psychiatrist.

“We’re speaking out today for the first time because we want to save lives,” Diamond said in a statement. “No matter where we turned, we never found the help that Steven needed.”

Diamond announced her charity would donate $20 million to the Road to Recovery, a new addictions treatment model at Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital. The program offers 95 treatment beds and will offer a variety of drug addiction services including in-patient care, transitional housing, and outpatient care.

The program, which is expected to open its first beds focusing on the stabilization of drug addicts in fall of 2023, is intended to reduce wait lists and provide one location for services.

Treatment

“Road to Recovery began as a vision for a full continuum of substance use care within a single setting at St. Paul’s Hospital, so that people can access the evidence-based addiction care they need, when they need it,” said Dr. Seonaid Nolan with the B.C. Centre on Substance Use.

The president of Providence Health Care, Fiona Dalton, said the Diamond Foundation’s generous donation was a “catalyst” to getting the province to fund a new treatment model.

“We were able to go to the government with this really fundamental new way of working and we were able to say, ‘And to enable this we have a commitment from a donor to put all of this money in,’” Dalton said. “And that was really what enabled us to have that conversation.”

The province has committed $60.9 million toward the program’s operating costs, said the statement issued by the St. Paul’s Foundation. Part of that money will come from a $586 million budget allotment for “services and supports for people struggling with substance use disorder” that the B.C. government announced on May 18. The statement said the province would “also develop and roll out a new model of seamless care to support people through their entire recovery journey from detox to treatment to aftercare.”

Jill Diamond, executive director of the Diamond Foundation, said her brother Steven Diamond could not overcome his addiction despite the family's wealth, at a news conference in Vancouver, B.C., on June 12, 2023. Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press

The Diamond family said in a statement that Steven Diamond might still be alive today if he had received the care that will soon be offered at St. Paul’s Hospital.

“We don’t want people to be forced to endure agonizing waitlists while navigating different resources at different places at different times,” Diamond said. “Instead, we aim to cut weeks or months off waiting lists within a full spectrum of treatment services all in one location—seamless, centralized—setting a new standard across Canada.”

Diamond said that even coming from a wealthy family with the financial ability to pay for treatment, her brother could not recover from his addiction.

Steven Diamond counselled others with addictions and worked as a massage therapist, his sister said. The family did not indicate if they tried to obtain private treatment for Steven.

“The fact that even he couldn’t get well, despite giving his entire life’s effort, shows addiction is a disease that must be looked at medically with new models of care,” she said. “That’s what today is about.”

The B.C. government has also said it would invest $184 million into “safer substance use.”

“In the month of March 2023, approximately 5,044 people were prescribed safer supply opioid medications,” said the province. B.C. said it would also offer more “supervised consumption sites.”

Diamond said that her brother had long periods of sobriety but was in and out of treatment. “This tragedy clearly shows our health-care system was not and is not up to the task,” Diamond said, according to CBC.

The B.C. Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.