One nonprofit is taking their message of community on tour across the Bluegrass Dream Dawgs program.

Public health is public safety is bringing together community stakeholders to share resources around substance use, mental health and harm reduction.

We really want to move together as a state to make some positive change, and we don't want to leave anybody behind in that.

This is less about people's personal failings and more about the systemic values that we continue to endure together.

Public health as public safety brings together victims groups and law enforcement, the business community, and directly impacted individuals.

It's really talk about how the war on drugs have affected our lives, our communities, and the people that we serve.

And how we can all come together.

Is something that's not just an urban or rural issue.

It's a 120 county issue.

With everything going on in Kentucky.

This was an opportunity for everybody to be together and not just listening, but hearing.

Most people, when they hear harm reduction, they're thinking either, you know, Suboxone or methadone clinic or syringe exchange.

But it's so much more than that.

It also encompasses the housing issue that we have.

Transportation, you know, food, clothing.

It's really the basic needs of life.

A misconception is that when it comes to drug issues, that the answer is always incarceration.

Decades and decades shows us that even though we now incarcerate more people than we did 40 years ago, overdose deaths have not went down.

They have rose.

So incarceration isn't the answer.

We have people in here right now that are in in treatment for substance use disorder, sitting at a table with a police officer and having a discussion and feel uncomfortable having that discussion and really talking about issues and hearing the police officer have the same issues as someone that's in early recovery or have the same concerns.

You know, I've never seen that happen before.

It's not even the drones.

It's not even alcohol.

It's about something that is going on inside a person.

As as communities, we have to love these people where they're at.

We can't just keep looking down on them because if we keep doing that, the problem's never going to get better.

But if we can love them and show them that people are there for them, that, you know, we're here when you're ready, what can we do to help you?

Stay safe until you are ready?

And that's that's one of the major issues that I think is a lot of people don't get is, you know, we have to meet these people there.

We really have to go out into communities and be willing to do whatever it takes to help this person, because if they're not alive, we can't get them into recovery.

You know, you can't recover if you did.

This is a program that we all need to be part of and we all need to listen to the stories and we all need to really think critically and sit together and brave space because that's what it's going to take.

It's going to take each of us to set aside our different opinions or our different perspectives and listen to people we're going to learn.

I've learned so much today, and I've been a social worker for 41 years.

Public health as public safety.

We'll be making stops in Covington, Louisville and Paducah in the coming months.