This TED Talk features humanitarian warrior Jan Raider, recorded live at TED Women 2018.

For the past 24 years, I have been a firefighter in Huntington, West Virginia.

As firefighters, my team and I are tasked with saving lives and property

from such disasters as car wrecks, house fires, and also life-threatening medical emergencies.

I am a woman leading a department in a male-dominated profession.

And 10 years ago, I decided to increase my medical knowledge,

and I received a nursing degree.

That was because it became clear that the next big threat facing not only my city,

but other cities around the country, was not the

one-and-done disaster where you can ride in like the cavalry as a firefighter, put out the fire,

and leave feeling like you have made a difference and everything is okay.

The next big disaster in my city was and is the long debilitating and lethal disaster known as opioid addiction.

We now call this a health epidemic and we have replaced the name addiction with substance use disorder.

To give you some perspective of how significant this epidemic has become,

in 2017, in my county of 95,000 people,

we saw 1831 overdoses, 183 deaths from overdose.

This is the job of my firefighters as well as other agencies to respond to that.

Excuse me.

So, watching this epidemic unfold for several years, I developed some insight.

For this disaster, we need to redefine our job as a first responder.

We need to be more than just the cavalry.

We need to do more than just save a life.

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