Boston asked residents what they needed before spending a dollar of its opioid settlement money. Christian Arthur, senior policy and strategy specialist at the Boston Public Health Commission's Recovery Services Bureau, illustrates in this episode how the city started with a community assessment and turned that feedback into real programs—a first-in-the-nation fund for families who've lost loved ones to overdose, public health vending machines that dispense naloxone, and grants to the organizations already doing the work. It's a candid conversation about community engagement, spending with intention, and what other cities can learn from it.

Christian Arthur is a senior policy and strategy specialist at Boston Public Health Commission's Recovery Services Bureau. He has served the commission for the last seven years and has focused his career on building and launching harm reduction solutions that save lives and advance public health innovation.

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Learn how Boston is using its opioid settlement funding

Explore Boston's Overdose Data to Action

What does it take to help someone not just survive an overdose, but find their way to recovery? This Recovery Month, Brad Finegood, strategic advisor at Public Health – Seattle & King County, illuminates how his team is trying to answer that question. He opens up about losing his brother to an overdose, how that loss shapes his work, and why empathy is central to public health. We discuss how King County, Washington, cut overdose deaths by roughly a third from 2023 to 2025, the tools making a difference—medications, mobile outreach, a post-overdose center, and new crisis care centers—the promise of opioid settlement funds, and campaigns to confront stigma.

Brad Finegood serves as strategic advisor at Public Health Public Health – Seattle & King County where he guides the county’s overdose prevention strategy. He has served as drug and alcohol coordinator and health integration specialist for the county’s Behavioral Health and Recovery Division, where he also co-chaired the Heroin and Prescription Opioid Task Force. He has more than 25 years of experience in the field, has delivered two TED Talks on substance use, and roots the commitment to his work in the loss of his brother to overdose.

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Learn how to recognize an overdose

Explore King County’s Opioid Recovery & Care Access Center

Contact the National Help Line

Colorado has stopped calling wildfire a season and started calling it a year-round condition. At the same time, it’s facing that threat with a firefighter workforce that’s shrinking. Serve Colorado and the Colorado National Guard got together to bring an innovative solution to the table: the first program in the country to let a Guard member serve simultaneously as an AmeriCorps member on a wildfire mitigation crew.

Serve Colorado Executive Director John Kelly and Colorado National Guard Director of Homeland Defense and Resilience Col. Thomas Banker join us to discuss how two service organizations that had never worked together built a joint crew in Steamboat Springs, and why the model is already spreading beyond wildfire into critical infrastructure and cyber resilience.

John Kelly is executive director of Serve Colorado. He previously worked on the founding team of the civic-tech startup Generous, and he also served on the White House Domestic Policy Council. He was also deputy chief of staff at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Col. Thomas Banker is director of homeland defense and resilience for the Colorado National Guard. He oversees the statewide collaboration and coordination of critical infrastructure and cyber defense activities with civilian, public, and private partners.

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Learn more about Serve Colorado

Explore the Colorado National Guard

Interested in joining the wildfire crew? Check out what it takes