Keegan Hernandez was in fifth grade when his father died of an opioid overdose. A year later, he organized a 5k run that raised a staggering $14,000 for a local organization. Mackenzie Ehlert found her father dead after he took prescription fentanyl and heroin. She donated all of her Christmas money to the same cause. These two are working together to define their lives by triumph and not tragedy.

I exposed myself because I felt like I was hiding, hiding a part of me all because I only had some basic knowledge and false myths about HIV/AIDS. I feared people were going to treat me differently like I was nasty and contagious.

With America's deadly drug crisis looming large for years to come, public health officials say charting a path to nationwide recovery requires a multipronged approach, from treating those already addicted to tackling the epidemic's root causes.