Every Thursday night you can find Nathan Fields making the rounds of Baltimore's red light district, known to locals as The Block.
An outreach worker with the Baltimore City Health Department, Fields, 55, is a welcome sight outside strip clubs like Circus, Club Harem and Jewel Box.
In the early evening before the clubs get busy, he talks with dancers, bouncers and anyone else passing by about preventing drug overdoses and how to stop the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Later on, he'll drop into the clubs to check on the dancers who aren't able to come outside, finding out what they might need.
Fields has credibility on The Block that people higher up in the health department don't. "I watch him walk down any street in Baltimore city, and people come up to him, and they know that he is there to serve them," says his boss, Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen.
[For more of this story, written by Audie Cornish, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/he...s-red-light-district]
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