Planning for the future of peer education.

In 1970, the University of Massachusetts began a pioneering program using student peer educators in the fields of alcohol and other drug use and sexuality. Peer educators continue to have an impact on the campus through their creative and innovative health-promotion interventions. These student educators are valued as agents of change because they can communicate effectively with their contemporaries in ways that professional staff members cannot. The current restructuring of the UMass, Amherst, peer program that collapsed three individual topic-based programs into one integrated 2-semester course is an appropriate response to critical personnel problems and economic realities. The long-range goals for peer education respond to an agenda that supports and encourages the value of peer education on campus and accepts the need for flexibility in providing for program continuity and vitality.