Frequently Asked Questions
What is Peer Support?
Peer support links people who have experience living with a disease or condition with others facing similar challenges. Peer support - through community health workers, promotoras, lay health advisors, coaches and more - is widely used, from doulas assisting mothers during labor and delivery in South America to community health workers promoting healthy lifestyles and active living among older adults in numerous other countries. Ongoing support from peers who themselves are addressing similar difficulties can offer the kind of emotional, social, and practical assistance that is necessary for staying healthy - all while complementing and enhancing existing care and education resources and services.
Why Diabetes and Peer Support?
Diabetes is a global public health problem and is a particularly appropriate focus for peer support. According to the World Health Organization, with current trends prevailing, the number of individuals affected by diabetes is likely to more than double in the next two decades. Around the globe, diabetes is outpacing the ability of healthcare systems to provide adequate care. In addition, diabetes encompasses all aspects of life, from eating and physical activity to work and intimate relationships. Diabetes imposes challenges twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the rest of individuals' lives. For people with diabetes, medical treatment from their health-care providers is critical - but often not enough to master and maintain the kinds of everyday behaviors that enable them to live as healthily as possible. In fact, there is ample evidence that without sustained support, many people will not succeed in managing their condition well, leading to poor health outcomes, including avoidable expensive and debilitating complications.
Peer support programs can help individuals manage their disease and help health care systems be more effective. These interventions are based on the assumption that people living with chronic conditions have a great deal to offer one another in terms of knowledge and emotional support. If effective, peer support models would be a promising addition to public health systems that face severe resource constraints and increasing needs among patients living with diabetes and/or other chronic conditions.
What Do We Know About Peer Support?
In November 2007, Peer for Progress, with support from the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, collaborated with the World Health Organization in an international consultation on peer support in diabetes management. Representatives from over 20 countries from all parts of the world gathered in Geneva, described their peer support programs, and discussed key features of peer support interventions, evaluation, and adaptation across different countries. A report of this consultation is available at: http://www.who.int/diabetes/publications/en/.
What is the Role of Peers for Progress?
Peers for Progress was founded in 2006 to promote awareness and use of peer support and improve self-management amidst the growing, global diabetes epidemic. The mission of Peers for Progress is to evaluate, demonstrate, and promote peer support for diabetes management around the world. Peers for Progress is a program of the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation (AAFP/F) funded by the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation Inc. and developed in conjunction with the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and in collaboration with the American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE).
The program is rooted in peer-to-peer interactions in order to sustain individual behavior changes that will improve health and other quality of life outcomes. Peers for Progress is designed to demonstrate the value of peer support, extend the evidence base for such interventions, help establish peer support as an accepted, core component of diabetes care, and promote peer support programs and networks around the world.
How Do I Get Involved?
Please call 800-274-2237, ext. 4462 or contact us.
