In 2018, with grant funding distributed by the State of North Carolina (from SAMHSA and the CDC), the Johnston County Health Department funded 16 individuals in recovery to attend a peer support specialist training. Following this training, we did not have the capacity to employ any of these individuals.  The peer support specialists continued to support Johnston County in their respective communities after completing the training.
In 2023, with Opioid settlement funds from the State of NC, Johnston County Health Department funded 8 individuals in recovery to attend a peer support specialist training. We hope to employ 2 peer support specialists to work with Johnston County Residents at Johnston County Behavioral Health and through an EMS program in the future.

In 2024, We will train additional Peer Support Specialists. These participants must complete 60 hours of hands-on training from an accredited program. We will offer an application based scholarship for 8-10 individuals.
Peer support specialists' primary role is to mentor a person in recovery by linking them to treatment resources, building self-efficacy, sharing experiences, and assisting with securing other basic needs like housing and food.

Residents with at least one year in recovery from opioids or other substances, who are interested in completing a certification program to become a Peer Support Specialist and help others on their recovery journey.

According to the NC Peer Support Specialist Website, Johnston County has 52 certified Peer Support Specialists. Being a county of over 200,000 people this is less than .026% of our population. Each peer support specialist would need to serve almost 4,000 people. Training more peer support specialists in Johnston County would impact our residents access to Peer Support services.