IF YOU SMOKED, GET SCANNED.

NYC Health + Hospitals currently has 86 peers on staff throughout the system. The program includes six weeks of classroom training; a six-week, full-time, hospital-based internship with rotations in the inpatient mental health unit, emergency department, and mobile crisis teams; and self-directed hours required for state certification.

Peer Academy staff work with students to help them find and maintain employment for up to six months after graduation. The next session of the Peer Academy will take place in the fall.

“The Peer Academy was different from anything I’ve experienced,” said Regina Fambro, CRPA-P, a peer counselor at NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx. “I went from living in a world where I felt no one understood me to being in a room where easily 20 people can relate to me. That was huge for me. We learned through classroom instruction and were hands-on during our internship. We built a family amongst ourselves through community-building exercises. We supported each other, but also held each other accountable. Our team laughed, cried, and danced together. The Peer Academy has prepared me in my current role as a peer counselor by giving me the courage to open up and be able to help patients I encounter. It increased the amount of empathy I already had for people. It’s also allowed me to learn appropriate ways to advocate for my patients and ensure they are treated from their illness and not their condition, whether it’s substance abuse or mental health.”

“The Peer Academy gave me this incredible opportunity to inspire and support others who are suffering from addiction, so they don’t have to go through it alone,” said Jack Chudasama, a student in the first cohort of the Peer Academy who is now a peer counselor at NYC Health + Hospitals/ Elmhurst. “For 30 years, I battled addiction, so being a peer counselor is good for my own recovery, too. It grounds me and gives me a strong sense of purpose.”

“For years, I saw a psychiatrist and a therapist, but when I started working with a peer counselor and going to a peer support group, I had a breakthrough,” said Brian Pelzer, who receives services at NYC Health + Hospitals/Woodhull. “You’re with other people who have similar problems, and you realize there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I reconnected with my family, and I learned techniques that help me in my day-to-day life. Now I go to my peer group every week, and it’s a part of my recovery.”

An important part of the system’s workforce development efforts, the NYC Health + Hospitals’ Peer Academy is a comprehensive that trains individuals with a lived experience of mental health or substance use challenges to become peer counselors employed by a hospital system.

Peer counselors are an important and growing occupation in the behavioral health field, but the jobs are hard to fill. Before creation of the Peer Academy in 2022, peer counselors had the highest vacancy rate of any behavioral health occupation at NYC Health + Hospitals. The peer counselor workforce continues to grow, as more programs and services expand their use of peer services and the vacancy rate remains high.

The self-directed learning and classroom hours needed for state certifications to become a Certified Peer Specialist for mental health and a Certified Recovery Peer Advocate for substance abuse are part of the Peer Academy program. It includes more than 20 hours of online workshops, 168 hours of classroom training, and 168 hours at a hospital-based internship.

An increasing number of the students are former NYC Heath + Hospital patients who were referred by clinicians throughout the system and are in recovery, yet have limited work histories. There is huge interest in participating in the program because it is a job that provides meaning and purpose. The work is also attractive because it is a unionized city job, with built-in career ladders and ample opportunity to grow professionally at a large organization.