Preparing Systems, Supporting Peers: Advancing Public Sociology through a Scalable Peer Workforce Model

• In Event: Innovations in Sociological Practice and Public Sociology: Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Certified peer recovery specialists are increasingly central to behavioral health treatment systems; however, their integration remains uneven and structurally constrained. Credentialing regimes, financing mechanisms, professional hierarchies, and organizational cultures frequently reproduce stratified forms of authority that marginalize lived experience as legitimate knowledge. These dynamics reflect broader social pressures through which institutions construct professional legitimacy, allocate power, and regulate access to labor markets. This paper presents a proposed community-academic partnership between the University of South Florida and the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) Sarasota/Manatee Counties that advances a scalable Peer Training Model as an innovative approach to integrating peer recovery specialists into existing systems of care.

Rather than treating peer workforce development as a technical training problem, this model addresses structural and cultural barriers. Challenging existent systems of professionalization, institutional logics, stratification, and power, the project centers lived experience as a form of epistemic authority and seeks to restructure the conditions under which peers enter, remain in, and influence behavioral health systems. The proposed model operates at three levels: (1) organizational readiness training to prepare agencies for meaningful peer integration; (2) a structured internship-to-employment pipeline to reduce credentialing and labor market barriers; and (3) documentation of systemic financing, legal, and cultural constraints to peer utilization, offering recommendations for change.

Using a convergent mixed-methods design connecting individual peer experiences to broader structural forces, the project illuminates how personal recovery trajectories intersect with public policy and institutional design. Although focused in Florida, the proposed model is intentionally structured for adaptation across statewide systems of care nationally, offering a replicable framework for institutionalizing peer roles in diverse settings. By moving beyond critique to collaborative structural redesign, the project demonstrates public sociology in action: co-producing knowledge with community partners, embedding sociological analysis into policy and organizational reform, and advancing equity through institutional transformation.

Authors

• Laura Curran, University of South Florida

• Dane Minnick, University of South Florida

• Sandra S. Stone, University of South Florida

• Nathan Scott, University of South Florida