Integrated Peer Support
The Integrated Peer Support Health and Wellness team has two certified peer support specialists who have lived experience with mental health recovery and substance use recovery and have completed various trainings including Intentional Peer Support, health coaching, and tobacco treatment. Peer Supports assist people with developing their own health and wellness goals, creating strategies for self-empowerment, and taking concrete steps towards building fulfilling, self-determined lives.
Peers empower, encourage, and support with SAMHSA’s 8 Dimensions of Wellness through one-on-one interventions in the community (such as at the gym, grocery store, and food pantries), in the office during medical visits, via virtual meetings, and by phone. Our peers provide groups and are trained to facilitate several evidence-based models including:
- Stanford’s Diabetes Self-Management
- Stanford’s Chronic Disease Self-Management
- Whole Health Action Management (WHAM)
- Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP)
- Nutrition and Exercise for Wellness and Recovery (NEWR)
- Dimensions Well Body Program
- Hearing Voices Network
Our peers also offer innovative groups such as:
- Open Peer Support – to foster relationships and build skills
- Off the Hook – crocheting and knitting as a coping skill and for social connectedness
- Meditation and Movement – for grounding and gentle movement
Peers collaborate with the people they serve to create achievable goals using WHAM’s IMPACT method of goal setting. IMPACT stands for: Improve – the quality of health and resiliency, Measurable, Positively stated, Achievable, Calls forth action, Time limited.
Peers offer increased communication between clinicians and the people we serve, connection to community resources, education, and a level of acceptance, understanding, and validation not found in many other professional relationships.