Abstract
Peer recovery support services are instrumental in the promotion of long-term recovery primarily by focusing on building the recovery capital of people with substance use disorders. Women may have specific health-related needs that are not generally part of recovery support staff training. Our team co-created a model by training people with lived experience as coaches to promote the health of women with SUD during the critical period of their reproductive years when mortality from overdose risk is high and can be compounded by issues surrounding pregnancy. We explored the outcomes of a small pilot test of this model to promote reproductive autonomy in a recovery community center (RCC). The RCC and the champion-trained peer recovery coach were able to increase their reach to women of reproductive age and facilitated linkage to healthcare and health-promoting resources. The model has the potential to improve the participants’ abilities to access reproductive and perinatal health resources and healthcare that could lead to improvements in their recovery.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2025.1529169
Funding Information
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This work was supported in part by a Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH, grant #K12DA035150) from NIDA and the NIH.
Repository Citation
Feld, Hartley C.; Elswick, Alex; Byard, Jeremy; Beckett, Whitney; and Fallin-Bennett, Amanda, "Championing reproductive and perinatal health with the recovery community: improving access to healthcare and health promotion resources to support recovery" (2025). Nursing Faculty Publications. 76.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/nursing_facpub/76
Notes/Citation Information
© 2025 Feld, Elswick, Byard, Beckett and Fallin-Bennett. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.