Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore City health commissioner, visits a newly opened Safe Streets center in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood in West Baltimore. Emily Bogle/NPR hide caption
Baltimore Rx Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen believes public health is the antidote for many of the city's ills. Can one health commissioner and her team make a difference? We're on assignment in Baltimore to find out.
Special Series
Baltimore Rx
Safe Streets outreach coordinator Dante Barksdale says right after a shooting, the injured almost always talk. "Some of them want revenge, right then and there," he says. "Some of them are afraid. They're thinking about their brother or their homeboy. 'Is my man all right? He was with me!' They're real vulnerable. They got questions." Patrick Semansky/AP hide caption
Dr. Leana Wen helps distribute groceries to seniors in a Baltimore neighborhood with few fresh food options. Courtesy of Lizzy Unger/Baltimore City Health Department hide caption
"The people that I know who have lost spouses, children, some of them are so ashamed that they wouldn't even acknowledge it as a cause of death," says A. Thomas McLellan, co-founder of the Treatment Research Institute. Courtesy of Treatment Research Institute hide caption
A man prepares to smoke synthetic marijuana on a street in East Harlem in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption
Maryland hospitals, including Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, are part of a payment experiment that provides new incentives to keep people in good health. Patrick Semansky/AP hide caption
"The Block is like living," outreach worker Nathan Fields says. "These relationships, you've got to keep them flourishing." Meredith Rizzo/NPR hide caption
Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore's health commissioner, is eager to see hospitals in the city pitch in on public health. Meredith Rizzo/NPR hide caption
In Maryland, A Change In How Hospitals Are Paid Boosts Public Health
A nasal spray version of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone demonstrated at police headquarters in Quincy, Mass., in 2014. Gretchen Ertl/Reuters/Landov hide caption
Health worker Nathan Fields (left), Rep. Donna Edwards and Dr. Leana Wen show people how to use naloxone on a street corner in Sandtown, a Baltimore neighborhood where drug activity is common. Andrea Hsu/NPR hide caption
Workers for the Safe Streets violence interruption project including Gardnel Carter, center, talk with Baltimore residents in 2010. Kenneth K. Lam/MCT via Getty Images hide caption
Leana Wen hands out awards to business owners for their efforts to support breastfeeding at the Baltimore City Health Department on Tuesday. Meredith Rizzo/NPR hide caption