Canada Research Chair in Partnership with Patients and Communities, CHUM Research Center, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
School of Public Health, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Health Expect. 2024 Apr;27(2):e14034. doi: 10.1111/hex.14034.
Engaging with peers is gaining increasing interest from healthcare systems in numerous countries. Peers are people who offer support by drawing on lived experiences of significant challenges or 'insider' knowledge of communities. Growing evidence suggests that peers can serve as a bridge between underserved communities and care providers across sectors, through their ability to build trust and relationships. Peer support is thus seen as an innovative way to address core issues of formal healthcare, particularly fragmentation of care and health inequalities. The wide body of approaches, goals and models of peer support speaks volumes of such interest. Navigating the various labels used to name peers, however, can be daunting. Similar terms often hide critical differences.
OBJECTIVES/BACKGROUND: This article seeks to disentangle the conceptual multiplicity of peer support, presenting a conceptual map based on a 3-year knowledge synthesis project involving peers and programme stakeholders in Canada, and international scientific and grey literature.
SYNTHESIS/MAIN RESULTS: The map introduces six key questions to navigate and situate peer support approaches according to peers' roles, pathways and settings of practice, regardless of the terms used to label them. As a tool, it offers a broad overview of the different ways peers contribute to integrating health and community care.
We conclude by discussing the map's potential and limitations to establish a common language and bridge models, in support of knowledge exchange among practitioners, policymakers and researchers.
Our team includes one experienced peer support worker. She contributed to the design of the conceptual map and the production of the manuscript. More than 10 peers working across Canada were also involved during research meetings to validate and refine the conceptual map.
在许多国家，医疗系统越来越关注同伴的参与。同伴是指通过借鉴重大挑战的生活经验或社区的“内部”知识来提供支持的人。越来越多的证据表明，同伴能够通过建立信任和关系，成为服务不足的社区和跨部门医疗服务提供者之间的桥梁。因此，同伴支持被视为解决正式医疗保健核心问题的一种创新方式，特别是医疗服务碎片化和健康不平等问题。广泛的同伴支持方法、目标和模式充分说明了这一点。然而，要理解用来命名同伴的各种标签可能具有挑战性。类似的术语往往隐藏着关键的差异。
目的/背景：本文旨在厘清同伴支持的概念多样性，展示一张概念图，该图基于一个为期 3 年的知识综合项目，涉及加拿大的同伴和项目利益相关者，以及国际科学和灰色文献。
综合/主要结果：该图提出了六个关键问题，根据同伴的角色、实践途径和环境，对同伴支持方法进行导航和定位，而不论用于标记他们的术语如何。作为一种工具，它提供了对同伴为整合健康和社区护理做出贡献的不同方式的广泛概述。
我们最后讨论了该图在建立共同语言和桥梁模型方面的潜力和局限性，以支持从业者、政策制定者和研究人员之间的知识交流。
我们的团队包括一名经验丰富的同伴支持工作者。她为概念图的设计和手稿的制作做出了贡献。在研究会议期间，还有 10 多名在加拿大各地工作的同伴参与，以验证和完善概念图。
