Rebuilding Peer Support Through A Peer Health Education Program

Rebuilding Peer Support Through A Peer Health  Education Program 

By: Tyisha Terry, Associate Director for Wellness Promotion Initiatives, UNC Charlotte

 After a 5-year hiatus, UNC Charlotte's Center for Wellness Promotion (CWP) peer health educators are back and serving the campus community! Peer Health Educators play a vital role in promoting wellness among students and their communities. The Wellness Peer Health Educator Program is an innovative peer education program that recruits and trains undergraduate students to educate the student body on wellness resources and how to live healthy lifestyles. Peer educators present a wide range of health programs, plan campus-wide wellness events, and develop marketing campaigns to educate the UNC Charlotte campus community. Topics include healthy relationships, sexual health, alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and general wellness.

 

Becoming a Peer Health Educator

Students must meet certain requirements before becoming a Wellness Peer Health Educator. They first apply and interview for the peer educator position. Once accepted, students commit to enroll in a three credit course for training. After completing the course, students make a one-year commitment to the role and are compensated for their work. Additionally, students who are accepted into the program conduct at least 5 hours of outreach and education each week.

 

Training Peer Health Educators

CWP is invested in the organization of the program and training of our peer educators to ensure that our students are prepared to be student leaders on campus. With this in mind, CWP developed a three-credit course, utilizing NASPA’s Certified Peer Educator (CPE) training as a guide. Consisting of classroom and online components, students are engaged with in-classroom workshops facilitated by CWP staff and campus partners, with a focus on wellness topics and skills training. Students also learn, discuss, and reflect with their peers in a face to face environment, building a foundational understanding of health and wellness topics and aspects of leadership development. Course content includes an in-depth, intersectional look at mental health, sexual and interpersonal violence prevention, alcohol and other drug education, outreach, and prevention.

NASPA’s CPE training has proven to be an effective strategy for building a well-educated and sustainable peer education group. The CPE curriculum helps peer educators develop leadership skills to be able to successfully create and implement campus programs. The first eight weeks of the course is designed to navigate through the trainings eight modules, covering the role of peer education, helping peers make a behavior change, listening skills, response and referral skills, how to take action and intervene, recognizing the role of diversity and inclusivity, programming and presentation skills, self-care, and group dynamics. The last eight weeks of the course students get hands-on experience with program planning, implementation and evaluation by participating in wellness promotion programs and initiatives. One assignment allows students to take a deep dive into the National College Health Assessment data, and utilize data to develop their program to implement and evaluate in the Spring semester.  “Peer Health Education has helped me gain leadership skills and public health knowledge that I did not have prior to serving as a peer health educator. I am grateful for the opportunity and highly recommend the program” (Six Caballero, Peer Health Educator).

 

If you would like to learn more about how to utilize NASPA’s Certified Peer Educator training to support the training and development of students on your campus, click here or reach out to Warren Martin at [email protected] directly.