Peer specialists – individuals with lived experience of mental illness or substance use disorder (SUD) – have become a growing and increasingly formalized component of behavioral health care in recent years.
New legislation introduced on Tuesday aims to build upon that momentum.
On April 8, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Jim Banks (R-Ind.) introduced the bipartisan Providing Empathetic and Effective Recovery (PEER) Support Act. Kaine and Banks are members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
“Peer support specialists play an important role in mental health and substance use disorder treatment teams, and provide valuable support to individuals in recovery,” Kaine said in an announcement. “At a time where we need to expand access to mental health care and substance use disorder treatment, this bipartisan legislation is critical to helping peer support specialists enter the field.”
Among its goals, the PEER Support Act would enable the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to train, educate and support the professional development of peers. Additionally, the bill would encourage SAMHSA to publish research and best practice recommendations for training and certification programs.
The bill also calls on SAMHSA to recommend career pathways for peer support specialists.
“As millions of Americans struggle to overcome addiction, access to peer support specialists saves lives,” Banks said. “This bipartisan bill helps better connect these experts – who have overcome addiction themselves – to those in recovery.”
Leaders from Mental Health America of Virginia, the Bipartisan Policy Center, Community Health Center of the New River Valley and other organizations have voiced support for the bill.
The legislation is also supported by the Association for Addiction Professionals, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the National Association for Peer Supporters (NAPS).
Co-sponsors include U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Beyond codifying new duties for SAMHSA, the PEER Support Act would direct the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to revise the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system to recognize peer support specialists as a profession, which would help ensure accurate data reporting on the field.
It would also instruct the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to conduct a study to research states’ screening processes for prospective peer support specialists “that may pose undue barriers to their certification, and provide evidence-based recommendations for overcoming those barriers.”
In the context of SUD, peers can serve as recovery coaches, helping individuals set personal goals, navigate treatment options, access community resources and adhere to care plans. They can also often work in harm reduction programs, detox centers and recovery residences.
Peer specialists are increasingly embedded within integrated care teams, too, working alongside clinicians, case managers and social workers to offer a holistic approach to recovery.
“Pretty much every person who is getting treatment for a mental health or substance use condition will benefit from peer support,” Shrenik Jain, founder and CEO of Marigold Health, said at the 2024 Behavioral Health Business VALUE conference.
Several factors have driven wider use of peers in the behavioral health industry.
One such factor, for example: Many states have amended their Medicaid plans to cover peer support services, helping to formalize and scale this workforce.
Federal efforts to combat the opioid public health emergency have likewise fueled models using peer support specialists.
“As a result, millions of dollars have flowed through states, localities and different federal agencies that have focused on the substance use peer support workforce,” Dana Foglesong, national senior director of recovery and resiliency services at Magellan Healthcare, said at VALUE 2024. “Since in many spaces, those certification trainings are combined, that’s just naturally grown the capacity around building a workforce.”
