Durham's HEART program, which stands for Holistic, Empathetic, Assistance, Response Team, is set to undergo a significant expansion starting Monday.

The program, which currently serves only a third of the city, will be expanded to cover the entire city. This means that residents in all parts of Durham will be able to access the program's services, which are designed to provide support to people experiencing mental health or quality-of-life crises.

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Tracy Jackson has what most of us dream of, having a job that he loves and fulfills his life's mission.

"Our most vulnerable communities lack the support and resources they need," Jackson said. "So I'm here to be able to lend some healing to those folks at this time."

Since graduating with a master's in social work from North Carolina Central University-Jackson has been here- at Durham community safety's program HEART. Just a week into the job, Jackson saw what a difference he could make in this way.

"911 received a call of a gentleman that was in distress, we responded and he expressed that he was overwhelmed, he had just lost his job at duke that he had for 20 years, he was unsure of how he was going to pay his rent, his children were also in crisis-he was a single father,' Jackson said. "But we were able to connect him to resources to get his rent paid, and also provide some therapeutic support through our clinicians and peer support specialist."

Ryan Smith, director of Durham's community safety, explains the city wide expansion of heart will reach more people, but they already have a thorough system regarding who is dispatched in which situation.

"If you call 911 and you experience a crisis, a call taker is going to answer, they're going to ask you a set of questions, the questions will change a little bit depending on what type of experience you're experiencing," Smith said. "If it's a suicide threat with no weapon, it will dispatch one of our community response teams, if it's a suicide threat with a weapon it will recommend co-enforcement and other law enforcement to arrive on the scene, we've been doing this for 18 months we haven't had a single safety incident."

"I think our commitment is to the city of Durham and our neighbors is to ensure vulnerable communities and everyone receive the help they so deservedly need," Jackson said.

This program is inspiring other cities and towns, all of the green pins on this map represent other municipalities who have come to Durham- virtual or otherwise- to learn about the program and take it to their area. Smith hopes the program in Durham will eventually be available 24 hours, seven days a week and across the country.

Heart's current hours are at Durhamnc.gov under the community safety section.