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The Center on Violence and Recovery

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New approaches to community and intimate violence

Peer Support

Peer support is an important tool for creating opportunities for recovery and resiliency in individuals and communities through people who share unique needs and cultural beliefs. Linked through shared work, background or trauma, peers are often the best at helping one another cope.

The Center on Violence and Recovery is involved in several distinct projects based on significant peer support:

    • Public Safety Trauma Response (PSTR)
      In 2008, researchers at the Center on Violence and Recovery completed a study of two peer trauma education and support programs currently available to members of the New York City Police Department: NYPD’s Early Intervention Unit and Police Organization Providing Peer Support (known as POPPA). This study, titled Public Safety Trauma Response (PSTR) was funded with a grant from the Department of Homeland security in 2005. In order to define best practices and develop new public safety peer support models, PSTR examined how these two programs (EIU and POPPA) responded to officers' mental health needs. To read more about the PSTR project, please click here.

    • No More Tears (NMT) is a prisoner-run dialogue program currently going on at San Quentin Prison in California. To find out more about No More Tears, please click here.

    • New Program for NYPD Officers
      POPPA has developed a new program for NYPD officers called Resiliency Support. Using small groups of police officers led by Peer Support Officers and clinicians to prevent and reduce negative outcomes resulting from ongoing occupational stress and exposure to other work-related traumatic events. A study being conducted by the Center on violence and Recovery examines why POPPA felt compelled to start the program, how the program was implemented, and the unique approach POPPA employs.