The plan: To assist and improve Maryland’s peer workforce, who have been deployed to help address the state’s opioid/polysubstance use crisis
Maryland will have a new, comprehensive, go-to resource for peer recovery specialists—those who share the lived experience of substance use and recovery—thanks to an inaugural grant to the Center for Substance Use, Addiction & Health Research (CESAR) from the University of Maryland’s Do Good Institute.
The digital hub will centralize information for Maryland peers with an eye to action, focusing on support for those in recovery from opioid use as well as other addictions.
“We are grateful that the University has recognized the value of supporting peer leaders so that they can shape addiction recovery efforts by using their lived experience to help others,” said Dr. Jessica Magidson, Director of CESAR and a co-principal investigator of the project.
Magidson and a team of peer recovery specialists and CESAR researchers will specifically use the grant to kickstart the creation of a digital platform that will give Marylanders’ access to peer-led, recovery-friendly tools for education, training, certification, employment, supervision, and other resources.
The team will also work to fill training gaps identified by peers and expand opportunities for peers to access training and certification and receive support. In this way, peers will be able to work together to provide an ongoing voice in the development of programs and policies.
“We want to expand the scope of research conducted at the university to include the voices and skills of those with lived experiences,” Dr. Magidson said.
The grant funding this work was a part of the inaugural round of funding provided by university’s Do Good Institute. The competitive program saw over 140 applications requesting more than $3 million. Do Good conducted several rounds of review, including follow-up interviews with some applicant teams. The result was 27 separate projects being funded, including CESAR and three other College of Behavioral & Social Sciences-led initiatives.
“CESAR’s team is uniquely situated to make an impact. We work closely with peers across the state and have led multiple projects designed to provide training and employment support, and to evaluate the impact of peer-delivered programs,” said Erin Artigiani, Deputy Director of Policy at CESAR and co-principal investigator on the project.
CESAR staff have experience creating trainings, educational webinars and online resource locators for multiple state and national projects. CESAR is currently conducting five active NIH-funded trials focused on peer-delivered models, with two additional NIH trials pending, and a Department of Labor-funded three-year recovery to work project in western Maryland.
The new hub’s bottom-up approach, which will build upon CESAR’s earlier work and be guided by priorities shared by peers themselves, will connect peers, providers, researchers and state agencies through a community-building initiative designed to inspire action and power impact.
"The potential of the peer hub is that it can bridge current information gaps and provide peers with easy access to the necessary resources to become certified," said Gabrielle Bozman, a peer Interventionist. "We intend it to be a new tool to support a network of peers and the integration of these peers into the workforce and communities across Maryland."
See Maryland Today article: $460K Awarded to Faculty, Staff, Students From New Do Good Campus Fund