Uniting Lived and Professional Expertise to Strengthen the Continuum of Care: SAMHSA’s New Federal Efforts to Expand Recovery and Prevent Overdose

Research has proven that the incorporation of lived and living experience serves a pivotal role in prevention, treatment, recovery, and harm reduction efforts. Response efforts ranging from peer support in local or clinical settings, to policies and programs across federal and state government can all benefit from enhancing collaboration with and increasing integration of both people and professionals who have been directly impacted by substance use. From practitioners to executives, and from lawmakers to advocates--all these professions working to stem the crisis have something in common: they actively benefit from collaborating with people and professionals with lived experience. For instance, law enforcement can increase their understanding of how certain substances are reaching our communities by engaging those with lived experience--helping to stem the influx of fentanyl. Lawmakers routinely depend on the voices of those with lived experience to inform policies and programs that directly impact individuals and communities.

Across the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), innovative and impactful policies, programs, and initiatives are being led and developed by these voices as well. SAMHSA’s new Office of Recovery, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention are just some of the offices and centers that are combining the expertise of physicians, social workers, and public health professionals—many of whom have lived experience-- to increase collaboration across the continuum of care.

During this session, attendees will take a journey through some of the new, innovative, and collaborative efforts across SAMHSA and its partners that combine professional and lived experiences, perspectives, and expertise. Staff from the Office of Recovery, CSAT, and CSAP will engage in a discussion-style presentation that focuses on the critical work being led across the agency and its partners, provide an overview of SAMHSA's new Office of Recovery and various other initiatives such as SAMHSA’s National Model Standards for Peer Support Certification, Harm Reduction Framework, naloxone saturation plan, Peer Recovery Center of Excellence, and National Harm Reduction Technical Assistance Center, and describe how professional staff--from physicians to social workers-- keep the lived experience perspective at the forefront throughout. This session will also describe some of collaborative efforts that are occurring between prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery, and outline various other efforts across SAMHSA and HHS that depend on the voices of people with lived experience. Finally, participants will engage in discussions on how they can or are incorporating lived experience into their own programs, and share how they are collaborating across their communities to achieve their own mission.