Peer recovery support services (PRSS) are increasingly offered across diverse community, criminal justice, and healthcare settings to address opioid, stimulant, and other substance use disorders.  The power and potential of PRSS comes from the unique roles that peers play, promoting both hope and pragmatic steps for change. With a goal of strengthening programmatic outcomes and advocating for greater programmatic implementation, BJA's COSSAP has begun focusing on the evaluation of peer programs.

This session will spotlight BJA COSSAP grantees that are currently collecting data and evaluating their peer programs, as well as some of their preliminary outcomes.

Presenters

• Jennifer King, M.A., CFRE, is the executive director of The Council of Southeast Pennsylvania, Inc. and the Pennsylvania Recovery Organization – Achieving Community Together (PRO-ACT).  She has three decades of experience in development and leadership in the nonprofit sector in Pennsylvania and in California.   She has a master’s degree in communication from LaSalle University and earned the Certified Fundraising Executive Credential.  She serves on the board of the Bucks Mont Collaborative as vice president, and chairs the membership committee, and she served two terms on the advisory board for Bucks County Children and Youth Social Services Agency.
• Kelly Dennis, B.S., R.S., serves as the director of health promotion and quality improvement for the Ross County Health District in Chillicothe, Ohio, where he builds programs and services, manages several grant programs, and helps strengthen community partnerships and programs aimed at improving health outcomes.  Mr. Dennis also serves on the Ross County Health District’s COVID-19 Response Leadership Team, assisting with the agency’s COVID-19 response planning, vaccination planning, data collection and analysis, and community planning.  Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Kelly has served on several community collaborations with local elected officials, agencies, and health care systems to help lead the community’s response to the pandemic.
• Christina Cenczyk, MSCJ, is the director of data and research for the University of Alabama at Birmingham's (UAB's) Substance Abuse Division, which involves both Community Justice Programs and Beacon Recovery.  In this role, she works to institutionalize the use of data for systems-improvement while making it a routine business practice to record and review essential metrics.  She is engaged in the evaluation of multiple projects involving drug courts expansion, family wellness, recovery support services, pretrial assessment, and a comparison study of chemically addicted pregnant women at the UAB Complications Clinic.  Ms. Cenczyk holds a masters degree in criminal justice from the University of Alabama (2001) and has worked within criminal justice and treatment-oriented systems for 25 years serving at-risk populations. She has a combined background of program management, data analysis, systems development, and project evaluation that is enhanced by a practitioner perspective.

Resources

• Presentation Slides