This coroner wants to keep you alive

Howdy to my fellow Americans (and neighbors from around the world), welcome to the first I am an American (IAAA) newsletter. This is the new weekly must-read for anyone who is proud to be an American or interested in what makes us diverse + unique. Our money says “E Pluribus Unum” (out of many, one) for a reason. Each week, we'll introduce you to an exceptional American working to make his or her community a better place. Good? OK, let's do this.

Meet a coroner who wants to keep you alive

We make our communities better in lots of ways. For some, it’s just a way of life. We do unto others by helping to shovel a neighbor's snowy driveway or sharing a bumper crop of tomatoes. For others, that passion to make things better grows into a vocation – we commit our lives to faith or a public service job. For York, Pa. coroner Pamela Gay, the latter is the case. You might think Pam’s job is confined to a mortuary similar to the sterile white rooms you see on your favorite crime procedurals. Pam, though, is very much interested in decreasing her workload. When she started seeing a dramatic rise in heroin overdose deaths, she took action, becoming an advocate for treatment, making methadone and clean needles more available to addicts and making sure local police officers always have naloxone, which reverses the effects of an overdose, in their cruisers. “I’m just doing my job,” says Gay. Thanks, Pam. We think you've gone above and beyond. By the way, Pam is the eighth person we’ve profiled since Jan. 1st. Meet more of the Americans we’ve profiled here.

Why It Matters

The people featured in this newsletter, and the journalists who write about their inspiring work, are your neighbors. We live in your towns and cities and we feel the same desire you do to see the best in your fellow Americans, and to see solutions to local problems (and sometimes national ones, too) come from local people. This is one way the USA TODAY NETWORK is working to connect you to an unprecedented cross-section of Americans from the communities around the country where we have newsrooms - 110 and growing. Unlike some national media outlets, the vast majority of our journalists actually live in the small towns and cities they cover all across America. In fact, we did the math, and found that only one in every 39 of our journalists is based in D.C., New York or Los Angeles.
Of course, the fact that we live in communities from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. to Salinas, Calif., and everywhere in between - we share our neighbors' values. We cringe when we have to write a story about a factory shut-down or localized recession. We care about how schools use our tax dollars because our kids are in class next to yours. And just like you, we celebrate and support our hometown heroes, the amazing Americans who make our lives better on a daily basis. And, we have a national platform to take that celebration to everyone else in America, too. In future weeks, we want to feature your voices and points of view here, too, so if you have thoughts, submit comments to our social accounts. Or you can email us directly at onenation@usatoday.com.

Help us grow this project

1.    If a profile strikes a nerve with you, if you see value in it or a viewpoint worth surfacing, share it via social media using the tag #WeAreOneNation. If this project exists in a vacuum, we’re not doing our job. And neither are you. 
2.    If you or someone you know is doing something to make our country a better place, let us know by officially nominating this amazing American using the form at onenation.usatoday.com. 
3.    Finally, follow us on social media where we’ll continue the conversation each week. Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
4.    Send this newsletter to your friends and family and let them know it’s the new weekly must-read for anyone who is proud to be an American.

P.S. 

Always look down here for a little something extra. This week, it's a video surfaced by USA TODAY NETWORK creative director Samir Singh, who is one of our favorite Americans. This week, he points us north of the border for a little lesson in togetherness.