When a person overdoses on opioids, hospital staff typically revive them with an overdose antidote and send them on their way.

Those same patients often land back in the hospital again after another overdose. Now emergency departments across the country are trying something new.

They’re hiring former addicts to connect these patients with the support they need to get into treatment for addiction.

Side Effects Public Media reporter Esther Honig met a community health worker–a man in recovery from his own addiction–doing this work in Columbus, Ohio.