SERVICES & CAPABILITIES
Peer Recovery Support Services Evaluation
Omni has been a trusted evaluation partner for national, state, and local leaders invested in advancing the evidence base for peer recovery support services.
Our experts work with clients from the earliest stages of their evaluation journey by leading them through identifying meaningful metrics and implementing foundational systems to track long-term impact. Our capacity-building teams train agency staff, including Peer Recovery Specialists, on the ins and outs of data collection and entry, and our research and evaluation teams build evaluation plans, support continuous learning from emerging findings, and document critical outcomes of peer recovery work and service provision to understand impact and illuminate drivers of positive system change.
Our recovery-related evaluation work aims to:
Inform the direction of peer support programming
Enhance program funding and sustainability
Increase the availability of peer support services
Demonstrate the power, impact, and value of peer support services
Who We Work With
We have been successful in implementing a values-driven evaluation framework that prioritizes recovery goals and values over clinically focused outcomes, such as days sober, that may be inconsistent with an individual or recovery program’s definition of success. This type of framework allows for systematic documentation of the impacts of recovery support services without over-standardizing the services provided by peers.
We have implemented evaluations in a variety of settings, including:
State and local behavioral health agencies
Community-based behavioral health clinics
Recovery community organizations (RCOs)
Harm reduction centers and mobile units
Hospital emergency departments
State and local justice settings (jails, prisons, recovery courts)
Colleges and universities
Advancing the Peer Support Services Field
We are committed to supporting the expansion of the peer support field, especially Peer Recovery Specialists. In collaboration with clients and partners, Omni has led multi-state roundtable discussions, presented at conferences, designed innovative evaluations, and produced several peer recovery resources and trainings to support others in the field doing similar work. Highlights include:
TOOLKIT
Measuring Peer Recovery Outcomes Toolkit with Peer Recovery Center of Excellence
Drawing upon extensive experience developing and implementing a robust and unique strategy for evaluating peer recovery services in ways that prioritize recovery-focused values and reflect multiple definitions of “success” in recovery, Omni partnered with Peer Recovery Center of Excellence on a toolkit to support organizations and programs committed to high-quality, meaningful evaluation of peer recovery support services.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Measuring Outcomes of Peer Recovery Support Services: Literature Review
A literature review examining common peer recovery support outcomes and instruments appropriate for measuring these outcomes. Developed in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services and State Opioid Response grant funding.
IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE
Peer Recovery Support Implementation Guides
Recommendations to address common challenges of peer implementation in three contexts where peer work is growing: collegiate settings, hospitals and emergency departments, and justice settings. Developed in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services and State Opioid Response grant funding.
Peer Support Evaluation Leadership Team
Jenna Lee Mathews, MSW (she/her)
Senior Research Manager
Jenna Lee Mathews is a Senior Research Manager at Omni and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and combines mental health expertise with a passion for system improvement and program evaluation. Her work at Omni has included several projects in behavioral health evaluation, including leading the planning and implementation of longitudinal outcomes evaluations and retrospective evaluations of residential mental health treatment centers. In addition, Jenna leads the recovery component of the Virginia State Opioid Response Grant evaluation which encompasses evaluation of peer recovery services implementation across community mental health settings, emergency departments, collegiate programs, and justice system facilities.
Stacey McClellan (she/her)
Research Manager
Stacey McClellan is a Research Manager at Omni and manages projects in our Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice practice areas. Stacey is a mental health expert and brings this experience to the applied evaluation of substance use treatment, co-response, and recovery programs. Her work at OMNI has included projects that intersect these two specialty areas, specifically for peer support recovery programs. Her evaluation work includes the recovery component of the Virginia State Opioid Response Grant evaluation, which encompasses the evaluation of peer recovery services implementation across the setting, peer-involved co-responder programs, and developing a values-driven peer outcomes measures toolkit.
Julia Simhai, MPH (she/her)
Director
Julia Simhai is a Director at Omni and oversees projects in our Community Health and Behavioral Health practice areas. She specializes in applied evaluation of substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery programs. She focuses primarily on working with government sector clients to design, evaluate, and improve behavioral health outcomes in communities.
Julia has overseen much of Omni's work in the peer recovery space, with a core focus on helping organizations define and measure success in the context of the unique paths that substance use recovery takes. She has experience in translating disparate peer program results into unified reports that allow communities to understand what is working and how to advocate for additional peer recovery resources.
Connect with our peer support evaluation team.
How can we help? Contact a member of our research team to chat about your peer recovery support services evaluation needs.
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