. >> reporter: keith humphreys is a research err at stan ford university.emporary crisis bought long-term health emergency for the country. ? so we have start thinking about addiction and overdose like we think about covid. you know, when covid happened, there was a national sense this was hugely important, that it needed a lot of resources in terms of health services, information, research, all of those things, and we've never really done that with addiction. >> reporter: one of the examples that is getting thrown around as something that is working is that a lot of emergency rooms now including san francisco have someone stationed in the emergency room, so when someone comes in that survives an overdose, they are immediately met with some offers for services and some help to get out of addiction. now back to san francisco's numbers, the number was over 700 overdose deaths in the city last year, liz, and it looks like the city is sort of on track for maybe a little over 600 this year. so it would be a significant drop. still a high number,'s, in the city,